


The Supreme Art of War

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Courage the Cowardly Dog
Genre: Gen, Spiders, barbers, graphic depiction of farm chores
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courage knows better than most that misery acquaints a man (or a dog) with strange bedfellows.</p><p>In his case, literally.</p><p>  <i>Inspired by <a href="http://c2ndy2c1d.tumblr.com/">c2ndy2c1d</a>'s <a href="http://c2ndy2c1d.tumblr.com/post/69459342190/yeah-probably-its-not-the-best-idea-to-have-the">villains-as-caretakers AU</a>.  </i><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Doilies

**Author's Note:**

> The doilies are multiplying, the house is full of monsters, and there’s a secret in the basement. Nothing much out of the ordinary for Courage.
> 
> Oh. And someone’s coming to visit.

It had been three months and it was hard to keep track of everything.

He said this by way of an excuse, yes, but it was also very true. When it had just been the three of them in the little farmhouse, he’d had his hands full enough with the daily chores, to say nothing of the perpetual threat of certain, terrifying doom. Now, with eleven villains in the house at any given time (counting Big Toe and his lesser appendages), Courage couldn’t possibly be expected to keep up. And when one added to that the chaos inspired by all the visiting friends, he was doing all he could just by trying to fit into the new normal.

All things considered, he thought he could be forgiven his failure to notice that the doilies were multiplying.

***

One morning, weeks after Muriel and Eustace had been buried, Courage had slowly awoken on the bed. There had been nothing left for him at the farm except long crying jags on Muriel’s grave, so since he was warm and safe in bed, he knew he must have died in the night and gone to dog heaven. There was a warm hand on his side and he stretched into it, craving a good, long scratch.

Courage snuffled his nose into the blankets and inhaled deeply, excited to smell Muriel again.

Cat.

Cat hair.

Courage’s eyes burst open and he found himself staring at a pair of half-lidded, annoyed eyes.

“At last,” Katz drawled, pulling back his paw. “I’d rather begun to think you’d finally bit it, dear boy.”

Courage started to scream. That monster was lounging on Muriel’s bed! That wasn’t right! If Katz was here, that meant Courage hadn’t gone to heaven--he’d gone to the other place!

“Aw, don’t be so dramatic, velvet cake,” said a voice from behind Courage. The dog turned his head so fast that his body had to take a second or two to catch up. The Cajun Fox’s black sunglasses gleamed in the morning sunshine and he cracked a broad, white smile. “Hey there, fella. Nice to see y’all again!”

Courage started babbling.

“We’re not here for pleasantries,” Katz said. “You needn’t treat him like a friend when we know he’s nothing of the kind.”

“Well, my mama always said there’s no substitute for good manners. Looks like we ain’t got that kind of good upbringing in common.”

If Courage hadn’t been too busy trying not to have a heart attack, he would have noticed how Katz bristled. “Listen here, you bug-eyed hayseed--”

“Hush now,” said a soft, whispery voice. Courage wailed, seeing the Queen of the Black Puddle arising from a bucket of water beside the bed. “It’s no good fighting amongst ourselves.”

“Huhuhu, we will have to divide him in parts so that everyone gets a turn,” chuckled a fourth voice. Le Quack was standing on the bedside table and holding a huge mallet. “I’ll flatten him out, first--”

“Like hell you will!” the Cajun Fox cried. “Pup’s tender enough! You slap him with that mallet of yours and he won’t be fit for horse food! What we’re going to do is roast him nice and slow--”

“Drown him,” the Queen of the Black Puddle declared.

“Squeeze him!” bellowed a voice from the hallway. A chorus of “yeah!”s echoed into the bedroom.

“Flatten him,” Le Quack purred.

“We shall do nothing of the sort,” Katz insisted. “First, we’re going to have a bit of sport.”

Courage’s courage fled. Consciousness shortly followed.

***

By the time he awoke once more, the sun was high and Courage was alone in the living room with Katz.

He’d had nightmares like this.

“We appear to have reached a diplomatic impasse on the grounds that none of us are willing to compromise,” Katz murmured from his seat in Eustace’s armchair. He had a cup of steaming tea balanced on his knee and he was looking at Courage with a bored kind of distaste.

“We all feel ourselves entitled to the exclusive privilege of causing your demise,” the cat said. “As you can imagine, that means that no individual can make a move without fearing brutal reprisal from the others. It’s nearly impressive, really. If I weren’t so convinced of your absolute insipidity, I would almost imagine that you were some manner of tactical genius.”

Courage moaned quietly. He was tied into Muriel’s rocking chair with bungee cords. He could hear an enormous clattering in the kitchen and the sound of the tub running full-blast in the bathroom.

“A brief recess has been called,” Katz reported, sipping his tea. “For some moments it looked like Her Majesty and the hick would compromise on boiling you like a lobster. That fell through as soon as the question of what would ultimately kill you arose, since he simply must cook you to death and she will not hear of anything but drowning. Then Dr. Le Quack and the fungus seemed to reach some kind of agreement where the foot would crush your body if the duck could squish your head.”

Courage squealed.

“Obviously, we outlying three could not let that stand,” Katz murmured. “And no one is in support of any of my ideas, which I can’t say is especially surprising, given the company.”

Courage whined. “So what are you going to do?” he asked, trembling violently.

“We will stay here and continue to debate it, ” Katz replied, “for however long it takes to reach concord. In the meantime, you are disgusting and malnourished and I do not think any of us will consider it a particular feather in our caps if we stoop to slaughter a weak, foul-smelling mutt. You will be given a bath.”

Courage shuddered. “By who?”

Katz smiled in a thoroughly unhappy, unpleasant way. “By me.”

“Can’t you just kill me?” Courage cried.

Katz looked him up and down. “Oh, I do wish,” he said, drinking his tea. After a few minutes, he rose and walked over to Courage.

“Now remember, boy, you are a hostage,” Katz said, untying him from the rocking chair. “There’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.”

Courage thought about it as he marched up the steps, followed by Katz. He could run to the police, surely. There wasn’t much they could do about the Queen of the Black Puddle or Katz, who was probably still a legitimate businessman as far as anybody knew. Le Quack and Big Toe had criminal records, of course, and he would put money down on the Cajun Fox being wanted for granny-snatching.

It sounded like a real option until he realized that even if prison could hold Le Quack for twenty-four hours together, he’d be whittling down the obstacles for Katz and the Queen and he’d likely as not wake up the next morning, drowned.

Or forced to play racquetball.

Though of the two, he’d really rather drown.

He endured the world’s most rapid and brutally efficient bath at Katz’s hands. The cat only dunked him a few times and scrubbed him with brisk, firm strokes. By the time he was wrapped in a towel, his fur once again clean and pink, he felt a little better though no less terrified.

Then Katz dragged him downstairs and deposited him in front of a concoction of the Cajun Fox’s that smelled like a nightmare and tasted like a kick in the tonsils with a cayenne boot. It made his eyes water and he shoveled it into his mouth, face dripping, because he was starving and against all odds it was delicious.

The thought that Cajun Granny Stew might actually have been tasty made him want to die all over again, but he kept it together, sensing that any snivelling on his part might lead to his death sooner rather than later.

There was nothing to do but bide his time and try to plan an escape.

No one was willing to leave the house, each unwilling to trust the others with him. The Queen of the Black Puddle took up residence in the bathtub, while Big Toe slept in the living room. Le Quack licked his hand, smoothed back his feathers, and with a sleazy grin declared his intention of spending the night in the chicken coop. The Cajun Fox got in a brief argument with Katz over the bed in the bedroom, before discovering that there was a camp bed in the attic with the computer.

“Oh-ho-ho,” the Cajun Fox drawled, a dirty smile climbing across his face. “Never mind, tomato sauce--I’ll camp up here.”

“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS,” the Computer buzzed, horrified.

“You and me are going to get to know each other real well,” the fox said to the machine, plopping down at the desk. “Now, show Daddy some’a that good stuff.”

Courage covered his ears and moaned as he left the room, but he wasn’t able to keep himself from hearing “Oooh, Julia Child, you saucy minx!” as he scampered down the hall.

Katz took the bed.

Courage wanted to protest but one look from Katz quelled him.

“We cannot indulge your sentimental protests when there is scarcely enough space to house all of us,” Katz said, peeling back the covers and stripping out of the white dress shirt he’d been wearing. “I understand your qualms but you are going to have to reconcile yourself to the fact that a bed is just a bed.”

Courage grumbled to himself. “And where am I supposed to sleep?”

“I understand that the foot of the bed is considered traditional.” Katz cracked his neck.

Courage froze up. “No way!”

“There’s also the floor.”

“No!”

Katz slid into the bed and pulled the covers up to his hips. “This is not something I will debate with you, boy,” he said, aggravation leaking into his voice. “You are perfectly welcome to take your chances with the rest of the household and their varying competence at nocturnal murder or you can sleep here, confident in the conviction that I do not engage in spontaneous and straightforward slaughter.”

Courage howled.

Katz hissed. “Shut up and get on the bed!” he snapped.

Courage yelped and leapt onto the foot of the bed, terrified to disobey and unable to come up with any other sleeping arrangements.

Katz nodded once and doused the light. Courage could feel him sliding deeper between the covers.

It was silent for a long time. Courage dozed fitfully all night long.

***

Seven nights later, the question was still unresolved.

Courage had the farm itself to thank for that. For all the times he had kept the farm safe, now the farm was doing its part to return the favor.

The villains had chosen a venue not particularly conducive to long-term murder negotiations. Farms needed constant attention and upkeep or they would crash around the inhabitants’ heads. Every conversation that might have lead to concurrence on the subject of Courage’s death was interrupted by chores. The Cajun Fox cooked, the Queen of the Black Puddle cleaned, Le Quack “paid” for electricity and television, and Big Toe and Co. managed to be a remarkably proficient handyman.

Courage began to be able to sleep a night through. The smell of cat dander in the bed still rankled him, but every night he was exhausted enough to ignore it, and that was a victory in itself.

***

Courage had never in his life been so happy to see the Hunchback and Theodore, the Bigfoot. Now that they were here, he never wanted them to leave.

Two weeks had passed without any new developments in the plans to kill him. Courage was beginning to wonder if Katz hadn’t lied to him earlier. Maybe they had agreed to go along with Katz’s ridiculous compulsion to play with his prey and were lulling him into a long-term false sense of security.

But every day went by without Courage being killed and every day he wondered a little more if they weren’t beginning to lose sight of their self-proclaimed goal.

He was pretty sure the Cajun Fox was fixing his favorite foods, for one thing. Though why every meal was being served with a doily between the bowl and the plate was an unfathomable mystery.

The Hunchback and Theodore stayed in the barn for a few days, while they found a situation for themselves nearby. Courage and the Hunchback had a late-night jam session with the bells and Courage found himself pouring out his heart to his old friend, crying and whimpering in the Hunchback’s misshapen arms.

“You’re a very brave dog,” the Hunchback said kindly. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

The Hunchback set up a little apartment for himself in the hayloft and made his keep by performing for the entertainment of the household. Theodore visited as often as he could gain his mother’s permission, sleeping in the hayloft with the Hunchback and lifting and carrying around the farm.

“I don’t know if they’re ever going to try to kill you,” the Hunchback murmured one evening. “They seem more interested in just living on the farm. I really can’t say I know what to make of it.”

Courage whined a little, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Two days later, the Queen of the Black Puddle rose out of the sink while Courage was taking a bath.

“Hey, hon,” she breathed, “can you tell me a little bit about the guy living in the hayloft? He seems...nice.”

“Don’t you eat him!” Courage cried.

The Queen of the Black Puddle laughed, sharp teeth flashing behind her lips. “Oh, don’t worry. I just want to get to know him better.”

Courage sniffed and turned his head away, waiting for her to drain back down into the pipes.

Courage didn’t say anything to the Hunchback, but he stared and boggled when the Queen of the Black Puddle gave the deformed man such sappy looks.

***

By the fifth week, the Hunchback and the Queen of the Black Puddle were stepping out together, Big Toe had found a couch for the living room, and the Cajun Fox, Le Quack, and Katz were taking their smoke breaks together on the back stoop.

It was almost like having a family again.

***

He would wake up some nights, shaking violently, tears streaming from his eyes and drying in his fur. He never remembered his nightmares exactly but he knew what must have happened.

“Muriel,” he moaned, sobbing. “Muriel…”

He’d feel the bed shift and the body in it turn, and hear an exasperated sigh from the region of the pillows.

Katz would reach down and pull him up the bed, until he was about level with the cat’s stomach. He’d pick up whatever blanket Courage had been sleeping on and wrap him in it like a burrito. Then, he’d put his paw on the dog’s side, and let it rise and fall with Courage’s sobs and, eventually, slow, deep breaths.

“I know,” Katz would murmur, running his hand up and down Courage’s blanket-wrapped side. “I know, dear boy. But there’s nothing anyone can do. Now, go back to sleep.”

And Courage would.

***

Now and then he woke up on Katz’s lap.

He hated waking up on Katz’s lap. It was one of the plains of hell, just big enough for him and stinking of feline loathing and the residual pong of old man and armchair. There was no place on earth he’d less like to be, and it was really unfortunate because he was actually very comfortable there.

Katz had one paw resting on Courage’s side. Sensing that Courage was awake, Katz relinquished his grasp. “You were having another nightmare, boy,” the cat informed him coldly. “You were whimpering and sniveling on the floor, making a pathetic ruckus.”

Courage knew that. He’d been having a nightmare involving Muriel and the longing for his owner made him whine softly.

“If you’d just drink a cup of tea, you’d probably be fine,” Katz muttered. “Stupid boy. This has to stop, you know.”

Courage trembled quietly in the cat’s lap. After a few moments, Katz’s hand returned to Courage’s side and began to stroke slowly. Courage tensed up, horrified, but Katz just clicked his tongue and kept petting. Slowly, Courage’s muscles unwound again and he sighed deeply, inadvertently inhaling the smell of Katz’s fur.

It was complicated.

The whole thing had gone political on him, without him even realizing it. Muriel’s love and Eustace’s hate had kept him on an even keel before now, but with so many people and so many hateful dispositions in the house, it was almost impossible to keep track.

They all hated Courage as a kind of intellectual exercise. Instead of acting on it, they patted him distractedly on the head, kept the farm in habitable condition, and sniped at each other.

“Get’cha hands outta that soup pot!” the Cajun Fox would cry, slapping the Weremole’s curious claws with a wooden spoon and eliciting a sharp screech and angry gibbering. “It’s lunch for the pup!”

“Oh,” the Queen of the Black Puddle would say, as she began to emerge from Courage’s water dish. “Sorry, honey. My mistake.” She’d slip back beneath the surface and take her time dripping out of the sink.

“Here,” Le Quack would drawl, hurling a white stick at Courage. He’d duck, whimpering, only to discover that the duck had thrown him a huge bone. “Ze idiots who dug ze tunnel into ze bank vault found zis before ze police arrived. I zhought you might as well have somezing to chew.”

He didn’t know what to do. Sure, they nearly killed him pretty regularly, but only by accident. (He was about ninety percent sure Big Toe hadn’t meant to step on his tail. Well, eighty percent. Well, he apologized, anyway.) Things had been so clear-cut with Eustace and Muriel. One loved him, one hated him, and he didn’t have to worry about anything but keeping them safe.

But these creatures could take care of themselves. They didn’t need him at all. And yet, here he was.

Courage wanted to gravitate away from all of them, because they still scared the life out of him, whether they were taking care of him or not. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pull away from one without drifting into the sphere of another.

He didn’t know what to do. He was still scared, sort of, but he couldn’t really scream at top volume all day, every day. Besides, it was hard to stay focused on living in mortal fear when your enemy was sitting on the sofa, pretending not to cry, and blowing his bill into a handkerchief while watching The Young and the Restless.

It was hard to be afraid when the Queen of the Black Puddle giggled like a schoolgirl whenever the Hunchback smiled at her.

It was hard to cower when the Cajun Fox and Le Quack tried to speak to each other in French, each growing increasingly frustrated with the garbled diction of the other.

It was hard not to fall asleep, smiling, when everyone proposed a cure for his nightmares.

Muriel used to say that you didn’t really know someone until you lived with them. It turned out that that was true. He hadn’t known them at all before, and even if he only barely knew them now, it was a definite improvement.

In fact, Katz was the only one he still didn’t get. Everyone else was more or less understandable, although of course they could turn on a dime and surprise the life out of him when they wanted. Everyone else had real personalities. Everyone else liked things.

The Cajun Fox loved food and cooking and chasing chickens in the backyard. Le Quack loved money and jewels and watching the French soccer team win matches. The Queen of the Black Puddle loved sharks and the taste of human flesh and reading long books about sad Russians. Even Big Toe and his cronies liked gambling and peeking into the shoe section of the Queen of the Black Puddle’s fashion magazines.

Katz didn’t like anything. He drank tea as a kind of joyless compulsion, as necessary and unglamorous as breathing. He read the newspaper and took long naps and maintained his position as ultimate ruler of the armchair, all without seeming to actually care about any of it.

Courage was pretty certain that the only things Katz liked were winning and being in control and he didn’t think those really counted. Everyone liked winning and being in control, even if Katz usually took it way too far. Knowing that the cat was bored and tired and would rather be off masterminding something somewhere else didn’t shed any light on him, the way cohabitation had for everyone else.

He was just weird, and creepy, and Courage didn’t understand him.

And anyway, who really preferred to spend so much time in the basement?

Everyone else had a job around the house, but all Katz seemed to do was keep an eye on the laundry. They didn’t generate much of it, since the only one who really wore clothes was the Queen of the Black Puddle, so the hours Katz spent down there didn’t make much sense at all.

No one else went down into the basement and Courage’s terror-tortured imagination ran wild with possibilities. Who knew what the cat was cooking up, hidden away from everyone and everything in the house? On some nights, Courage could still hear Tarantella and Von Volkheim muttering to each other from their graves under the floor, and he had feared that Katz was plotting something with the zombies.

But every morning there was nothing more sinister from the night before than clean linens in the closet, freshly folded. The cat even discovered things that must have been in mothballs long before Courage’s time at the farm.

One of these was a warm knitted blanket. Courage was very fond of it, although it smelled potently of cat. He often took naps on it, folded up on Muriel’s rocker.

The Queen of the Black Puddle was the first to comment on it.

“Poor little dogfish,” she said one day, patting him on the head as she slithered towards the sofa. “Given such an ugly blanket to sit on.”

Courage snuggled down on the blanket in defiance, but jumped when Katz sat up straighter in the armchair and snapped down the newspaper. He peered at the Queen as if he was offended.

“I think it’s a handsome little throw,” the cat murmured. “Subdued shades of gray. Very sophisticated.”

“What? No,” the Queen replied. “It’s a hideous combination of colors. Purple and orange and brown--eyuck.”

Katz stared at the blanket. “Is it?” he asked, sounding bored.

“Yes. Aren’t cats colorblind?” the Queen asked, picking up the remote and turning on the TV. “I think the old woman must have been colorblind, too, to knit that thing.”

“Well,” said Katz, getting up from the chair. He set his tea down on a doily on the end table. “If it really clashes with the decor that badly, I’ll take it down to the basement--”

He reached for the blanket but Courage dug his nails into it and moaned. “No!”

Katz glowered at him. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t care if it clashes,” Courage whined. “I like it.”

Katz huffed a sigh, as if Courage was being totally unreasonable. “Design cohesion is important to the appearance of a functioning household,” he said. “Release the blanket.”

“But Muriel made it!”

“She most certainly did n--” Katz shook his head. “Fine. If you are determined, you may keep the rag. But take it up to your bed and pick something else to keep down here.”

Courage grumbled and took the blanket upstairs, spreading it out on the foot of the bed. Even if it was ugly, it was a nice blanket, with rows of neat, straight stitches made in soft wool.

He ended up having the rest of his nap upstairs, curled up on his blanket.

Things were going really well.

***

It was early afternoon and Courage was taking a nap on the porch. Deep in the house, he heard the low susurrus of the television, the discreet sniffling of Le Quack, and the soft snores of the Cajun Fox. He rolled over onto his back and stretched his legs up in the air, spreading his toes and sighing indulgently.

He dozed, happy not to think about anything at all. He’d spent the morning in the garden with Theodore and the Queen of the Black Puddle, trying to grow tomatoes, and then he’d fed and counted all the chickens. The only missing hen subsequently appeared in the refrigerator, on a doily, on a plate, with a little sign that said “For Dinner, Keep Your Filthy Hands Off.” Now he was taking a little break, and later he might go and see what the Hunchback was up to.

He rose up to bleary consciousness some minutes later when the distant rumbling of an engine woke him. Bewildered, he blinked his eyes clear. Nothing ever came out this way at this time of day. What was going on?

Courage rolled over onto his feet and squinted across the sand. His eyes widened and he screamed, racing into the house and shouting at the top of his lungs.

He’d recognize the grin in the truck window anywhere.

***

My gentle friends: hello, t’is I.  
I am quite well, as you espy,  
Although my spirits are not high.  
I’ve been a little  
Naughty.

The Home for Freaky Barbers is  
A paradise and seat of bliss  
But if I stayed I’d be remiss,  
E’en if escape is  
Naughty.

Word had reached me of sad events  
(Such vagaries as Fate presents)  
So I was forced to abscond thence  
And thus be somewhat  
Naughty.

Do not imagine that I go  
With joyful heart and happy glow!  
My soul is burdened down with woe,  
Though soon I shall be  
Naughty.

So tragic are the deaths of aunts  
That all earth’s pleasure only daunts  
The man returning to old haunts  
and leaves him feeling  
Naughty.

Yet steadfast hearts within our breast  
Will make us do our very best  
To carry on the family crest,  
However much we’re  
Naughty.

I drove a truck to Nowhere land.  
One could not leave the house unmanned!  
I went to take the farm in hand:  
A place where to be  
Naughty.

Behold: the farm stands very near!  
A landmark on the still frontier  
And on the porch? The doggie dear!  
Oh...I yearn to be  
Naughty.

***

One thing that really had to be said for living with monsters was that they didn’t disbelieve him when he warned them that something terrible was on the horizon. They knew better than anyone that things bumped in the night and they were perfectly willing to bump back.

And when they decided that bumping back was not an option? They were admirably quick to go hide in the attic and try not to make a sound.

It took all of Courage’s persuasive talents to explain the situation to them, certain as they were that they could handle a measy barber. But each and every one of them had been thwarted by Courage, and if Courage couldn’t thwart Fred, well, that put things in a new light.

The Cajun Fox and the Queen of the Black Puddle were the first to be convinced, each a little vain about their hair, and Le Quack had only needed to be reminded that there was nothing to suggest that Fred wasn’t as willing to pluck his victims as he was determined to shave them. Big Toe went along on the grounds that he didn’t want to be caught in any crossfire.

Though Katz was still unconvinced, he had the misfortune to be on the computer at the time and was locked in with the rest of them, glowering through the window.

Weeks ago, The Hunchback and Theodore had set up a semaphore system that communicated to the barn and now Courage warned them about the impending doom. He flashed them the number of the Home for Freaky Barbers and sat, shivering, as he waited for the news that they’d placed the call.

“He’s opened the door,” breathed the Cajun Fox, holding a glass to the floor and his ear to the glass. “Stepping inside.”

The house was so still. Even without the glass, they might have been able to hear the click of Fred’s shoes.

“Heading to the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator,” the Cajun Fox whispered. “He better damn not touch that chicken…”

“He’s running the tap,” hissed the Queen of the Black Puddle. “I feel it.”

“This is ridiculous,” drawled Katz, only to have Le Quack’s hand clasped over his mouth.

***

Why, such a cozy, clean abode!  
That these five months did not corrode  
The furnishings at all thus told  
Me: someone here was  
Naughty.

In the fridge I found a chicken.  
My heart’s pulse began to quicken!  
Surely now the plot did thicken;  
I’d soon be very  
Naughty.

Somebody here--besides the pup--  
Intended to sit here and sup  
But now they’d find the jig was up,  
I’d catch them being  
Naughty.

But hark! A voice within the wall  
All my attention did enthrall.  
I would root out this strange cabal.  
They’ve been so very  
Naughty.

***

“He’s leaving the kitchen,” the Cajun Fox whispered.

“Heading for ze steps?” demanded Le Quack, in a breath.

“Shh,” the Cajun Fox insisted, frowning. “I can’t tell.”

“Try harder,” insisted the Queen of the Black Puddle. “And what is taking the Hunchback so long?” she hissed, glancing out the window at the barn.

Courage whined.

“NOW, DON’T LET ME INTERRUPT IF THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT,” whispered the computer. The sound came out of a pair of headphones plugged into the speaker jack. Courage lifted one headphone up to his ear. “AND I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU MAKE SO MUCH NOISE WHILE TYPING THAT YOU MIGHT AS WELL SHOUT, BUT PERHAPS AN EMAIL TO THE HOME FOR FREAKY BARBERS WOULD NOT GO AMISS?”

Courage grumbled and put the headset back down. Katz bumped him out of the way and put the headphones on, booting up the email application.

OH GOOD, Courage read off the screen. THE TEMPERAMENTAL KITTEN INSTEAD.

Katz flicked the screen with one finger--OW! NO NEED TO BE SO ROUGH--and swiftly tapped out an email. He sent it with a soft click, put the headphones down on a doily, and stood up again, staring out the window at the barn. His tail twitched from side to side.

“No,” the Cajun Fox said, shoulders slumping in relief. “Not the steps. He’s just heading for the basement.”

Everyone sighed.

Except Katz.

“The basement?” he asked.

“Yup,” the Cajun Fox said. “Definitely the basement.”

“But the door isn’t locked!” The cat’s hackles were up and his tail was puffing. Courage whined a little.

“Who cares?” mumbled Big Toe. “That’s even better. We just have to let him stew in the cellar until the barred window boys show up.”

“Damn it, you don’t understand!” Katz growled. “I must leave! He can’t go down there!”

“Not through the door,” the Queen of the Black Puddle replied. “That thing isn’t going to be unlocked until that barber is gone.”

“Don’t trifle with me!” Katz hissed, hackles rising. “I’m leaving this room!”

Big Toe and company shuffled in front of the door. “Not a chance, pussy cat,” muttered the gangster.

Katz gave them all a murderous look and turned to the window, throwing it open in a jerky gesture. “Fine,” he snarled, and climbed out, dropping from view.

Courage, the Queen, and Le Quack ran over to the window. Katz had landed on the porch roof and was shinnying down the gutter.

“You’re going to get killed!” Courage whined.

Katz waved an impatient hand at him and disappeared beneath the porch awning.

***

The basement is the place to hide  
When the tornado’s strength is tried  
And up the floorboards all are pried;  
It’d hide a dog who’s  
Naughty.

I stole towards the darkened door,  
My clippers aching for the chore.  
We’d have these problems nevermore  
As soon as I got  
Naughty.

(Now, never think I’ll hurt the mutt!  
My own throat I would sooner cut.  
A little trim of ears and butt  
Is how far I’d be  
Naughty.)

But then before me leapt a cat  
His claws outstretched for close combat.  
He pounced and would have knocked me flat  
But I reached out and  
Caught he.

***

It was very quiet for a few moments.

“NEW EMAIL,” the Computer announced. The representatives from the Home for Freaky Barbers were on their way. From the barn, Theodore reported that the call had been made.

Then, from deep within the house:

**_“REOWRRRRRR!”_ **

Courage covered his ears and moaned.

***

His eyes, so sharp! His hair, so red!  
He twisted, turned, and never fled,  
His fangs protruded from his head  
As I was very  
Naughty.

It fell in locks, it fell in curls,  
It tumbled to the floor in whirls!  
His tender skin my snip unfurls,  
I felt so good, so  
Naughty.

He yowled, he hissed, he scratched my face,  
He bit, he clawed, with feline grace,  
He stayed my progress to that place;  
Guarding the crypt, he  
Fought me.

***

“Zey’re here! Ze men from ze asylum,” Le Quack said, looking out the window. “At last. Idiots.”

“Can you hear anything?” the Queen of the Black Puddle asked the Cajun Fox.

“Nothin’, darlin’, hang on a minute now…” The Cajun Fox frowned behind his sunglasses. “I think they’ve got him. No more fighting, anyway. They’re...talking?”

The inhabitants of the attic waited, tense, for several moments.

“Red’s saying something,” the Cajun Fox said. “Can’t quite make it out…oh, but someone’s leaving.”

“Oui, zey have him,” Le Quack said from the window. “Zey are loading him in the truck.”

Courage peered out the window beside the con man and sighed with relief as he watched a straitjacket-wrapped Fred get packed up in to the back of the armoured ambulance. The barber looked up at him and grinned still more broadly.

Courage whined in fear and Le Quack absent-mindedly patted him on the head.

“Stupid dog,” the duck muttered. “All is well. Be calm.”

The truck drove away and the Queen of the Black Puddle sent a flirtatious all’s-clear to the barn. They were ready to head back down into the rest of the house when the attic door rattled in its frame under the force of three loud knocks.

“What’s the password?” demanded Big Toe.

“Bloody incompetents,” came Katz’s voice, sour and weary.

Big Toe shuffled out of the way and Courage unlocked the door, opening it.

Katz stood outside, leaning on an arm on the door jamb. He was wearing a white shirt with all the buttons closed and the sleeves rolled down.

“There,” he said, glowering down at Courage and then at the others. “You cowards can come out now.”

“You’re wearing the David Lynch special, Red Vine,” observed the Cajun Fox, grinning and gesturing at his neck. “You have a close shave down there?”

Katz snarled and stormed out of the hallway and down the steps, amid much snickering.

“I will pay a million dollars to anyone who can get a picture of his haircut,” Le Quack volunteered.

***

Three men burst in with nets and straps  
And caught me fast within their traps  
And stilled me as they forced collapse;  
Surfeit of being  
Naughty.

My scratchéd face alarmed them some.  
They turned to kitty, fearful, glum,  
And asked to know how we’d become  
So brawly, mauly,  
Naughty.

The half-shaved puss, that suave, smooth tom,  
Began to speak with great aplomb,  
As if he’d never lost his calm,  
And told them why he’d  
Fought me.

“I think I am within my rights  
To banish with my claws and bites  
An invader who so delights  
In trespass. He’s been  
Naughty.

“I found him in the kitchen here  
And fought to guard my new home dear  
And won’t endure ever to hear  
You tell me I’ve done  
Wrongly.

“The house was left to one upstairs.  
I’ll get the deed to soothe your cares  
And prove to anyone who dares  
To question his  
Property.”

Aslack our lips, agape our jaws!  
The puss went out on soft cat paws  
And came back with the deeded claws  
And proved that I was  
Naughty.

“Please take him now so I may tell  
My family that all is well.  
They’re hiding upstairs in a cell,  
Afraid of how he’s  
Naughty.”

With nods and grunts they heard the tale.  
He filled them in on each detail  
And they dragged me, my legs gone frail,  
Back to the truck that  
Brought me.

I caught a glimpse, the merest gleam,  
Of something watching from the beam,  
Or somethings, someones’ eyes aleam,  
Watching, waiting, so  
Tautly.

At the window young Courage stayed,  
Tremulous, anxious, and afraid,  
With duck and foot and fox and maid:  
A good boy, never  
Haughty.

No heart turned hard or feelings cold  
You need to dread that I shall hold.  
My regard for you all is bold,  
Warm, sweet, kind, fond, and  
Naughty.

And so it ends! To dog defaults  
The farm, the house, and cat’s assaults.  
I am content without that schmaltz,  
Happy to have been  
Naughty.

Thus I did leave my aunt’s estate.  
Not wanting to recriminate,  
A quick note would have set me straight!  
These things drive a man  
Dotty.

Adieu, dear aunt! ‘Mongst heaven’s blest  
You surely are uniquely best  
And I am sure you sweetly rest  
While we, down here,  
Are naughty.

Oh, tender pup and house divine,  
Your excellence shall not decline.  
But have you any iodine?  
I fear I’ve been quite  
Naughty.

With love,  
Fred

***

Courage awoke that night on the ugly blanket. He sniffed the air. The bed was empty and had been for some hours. The house was dark and silent.

What was in the basement?

Courage whined softly to himself. “I’ve got to go look,” he mumbled to himself. “But I’m not going to like it.”

He crept out of the bed and tiptoed through the hall. From the bathroom, he could hear the soft gurgling of the Queen of the Black Puddle in the bathtub. He passed the open window, no longer astonished that he could hear the nasal snores of Le Quack all the way in the chicken coop. He slipped down the stairs, avoiding the creaky steps, and snuck past Big Toe. The gangster was grumbling about “doity rats” in his sleep and Courage covered his mouth to block any worried noises that might emerge.

The basement door was just barely cracked. Of course it was. Courage wanted to think that he would someday get to the point where subtle little hints of horror would make him roll his eyes instead of chattering his teeth, but he wasn’t holding out too much hope.

He pulled the door open just a bit more and tried to peer around the banister. The basement was dark except for the soft yellow glow of a lamp in the far wall.

Katz was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He was still wearing the shirt from earlier in the day, although he’d unbuttoned it enough that it revealed the pink skin exposed by Fred’s clippers.

In his hands he held a quartet of knitting needles, attached to which was a ball of slender white thread. He was slowly knitting his way around a large, complicated lace doily, the soft click of the needles and whisper of the yarn the only sounds in the room.

He looked focused, calm, content.

He also looked like he had spiders crawling all over him.

Which he did.

Courage stuffed his paws in his mouth and tried not to scream as he watch the creepy crawly monsters drag their webs across the cat’s arms and shoulders. The corners and edges of that part of the basement were covered in enormous cobwebs and horribly lumpy bundles of spider silk.

A spider clambered up Katz’s arm and onto his hand, trying to spin between his fingers. He stopped knitting and put his hand to the ground, coaxing the spider off. “I know, darling. I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry, too. Tomorrow we will go to the motel and I’ll find you something to eat.”

The spider on his shoulder dribbled onto his shirt and made a horrible chittering noise.

“Because he was more than you could handle,” Katz murmured, as if in reply. He glanced at the spider with a skeptical expression. “You might be able to eat bathing old women and unconscious old men but an unhinged barber with a selection of sharp objects would pose quite a challenge for you. Especially with your sister in this delicate condition.”

Katz paused his knitting again and reached for yet another spider hiding beneath the water pipe. He placed his paw on the spider’s belly, sitting very still and seeming to listen. “Still with us, my love?”

At last, he smiled faintly.

“Very good. You’re being very brave, dear,” Katz murmured. “The last thing you need is some damn-fool barber trying to shave you.”

One of the spiders was crawling up his knee and he reached down to pet its head for a few seconds. “Now, go on. Go clean up. I want all of those empty bundles down before I go to bed tonight. They’re disgusting. Move.”

Four spiders scattered to the back corners of the basement and began gnawing on the bundles. Small bones clattered to the floor as Katz resumed his knitting. Every few seconds he would reach down and touch the hiding spider, feeling for her in the dim shade of the basement.

“Good girl,” Katz whispered. “Good girl.”

Courage slithered back up the step and behind the door, desperate not to make a sound. Once he was in the kitchen, he bolted for the back door and ran out into the middle of the prairie. He looked around, shaking all over, and when he was sure there was no one nearby, he pulled his paws out of his mouth and unleashed the scream he’d been holding back.

Spiders! Icky, yucky, creepy-crawly, man-eating spiders! Dog-eating spiders! Katz was probably covered in their gross drool and traces of their webs all the time! Courage was never going to let the cat put Courage in his lap again!

Oh, crap.

Oh, crap, his blanket! Katz must have knitted that blanket himself and it was probably had all sorts of bits of spiderweb and bones and goo in it and Courage had been sleeping on it for weeks and---EUGH!

He was going to have to hide it somewhere and claim he’d lost it. There was no way he was ever sleeping on that thing ever again!

He walked back to the house, still quivering, and slipped back into the kitchen. He’d throw out the blanket and try to go back to bed, and no one would ever know.

The kitchen light clicked on and he yelped, eyes stinging.

“Whoa there,” laughed the Cajun Fox. “Just down here for a little midnight snack. No need to get all jumpy.”

Courage was panting for air, trying to keep his heart from beating out of his rib cage.

“You hungry, pup? Or you, Red?”

Courage’s head jerked to see Katz in the doorway of the basement, the cat’s own hand over his chest. Katz glanced at Courage, dropped his hand, and glared at him.

“I got a new recipe I’m just dying to try. Come on and sit down at the table and I’ll whip it right up,” the Cajun Fox said. He waved a print out of a recipe in the air. “That computer of yours knows how to cough up the good stuff.”

Courage whined quietly but trudged over to the table. Katz put the kettle on for tea and sat at the table, eyes boring into Courage’s face. He tried to stare back and began grinding his teeth.

“Something wrong, dear boy?” Katz asked.

Courage shook his head.

Katz leaned closer. “Blink,” he murmured. “I’ll know you’re lying whether you do or not.”

Courage mewled and quailed in the chair.

“Don’t you two get started,” the Cajun Fox said from the stove. He’d managed to throw half the contents of the refrigerator into a soup pot already. “You’ll wake up the whole house with that nonsense and then everybody’ll want a bite.”

Katz narrowed his eyes at the fox and gave Courage one last look before getting up to arrange the tea things. Courage sat in his seat and shook, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.

At last, the Cajun Fox brought over a bowl of something steaming and fluorescent red. “There y’are. Try it first and then I’ll tell ya what it is.”

Courage whined and picked up his spoon, scooping out a bite of the concoction. He pushed it into his mouth with a grimace.

“Well? Whaddaya say? Should I add it to my repertoire?”

It was hot. It was horribly hot, burning, and beneath the spice it tasted like rotten deer meat and moldy onions. Courage’s eyes were watering and his tongue was trying to leap out of his head through his nose.

It was delicious. He gave the fox a thumbs-up.

“All right!” the Cajun Fox grinned. “What about you, red pepper? You brave enough to try a little home cooking?”

“Certainly brave enough,” Katz replied. He poured a thin ribbon of white cream into his cup of tea and stirred it slowly. “But insufficiently suicidal.”

“It’s so good, it’ll make your tongue slap your eyes out.”

“Indeed.”

“Go on. Give it a bite! I might start to get insulted if you don’t try my cooking at least once,” grinned the fox, idly tossing his meat cleaver in the air. “After all, I know a body can’t just live on tea and cigarettes.”

Katz lifted one eyebrow. “If I do this, can I have your assurance that you will drop the subject in the future?”

“Sure, ginger puff. I can guarantee ya anything you like.”

Katz sighed and picked up a spoon, dipping the tip of it into the stew. The liquid began to eat away at the metal bowl and Katz gave the Cajun Fox a long, dry look.

“‘S a little hot, so don’t burn yourself,” the fox smirked.

Katz pushed the spoon between his lips and pulled it out, clean. He placed the spoon on the table, swallowed, and cleared his throat. “May I be frank?”

“I do insist upon it.”

Katz nodded. “I consider myself to be a man of the world. I’ve traveled a bit and had the opportunity to try many different cuisines. But if I really seriously consider my history, I think I can say with confidence,” he paused to take a sip of tea, “that that was literally the most disgusting thing that has ever passed my lips.”

The only warning was the flash of the cleaver as the Cajun Fox leapt across the table and attacked.

Courage screamed loud enough to wake everyone and between the Queen of the Black Puddle and Theodore they were able to pry them apart before they hurt each other too badly.

Although he did know firsthand that Fred had shaved his signature into Katz’s chest.

Yikes.

***

“You’ve been very elusive, dear boy,” Katz growled, looming over him. Courage moaned and clutched the computer chair. “I don’t particularly appreciate it.”

Two days after Courage saw him with the spiders, Katz finally caught him in the attic. The door was locked and while Courage was reasonably convinced that he could scream and get everybody to come running, they wouldn’t be fast enough to get to him before Katz killed him.

“I think we need to have a little chat about what you saw in the basement,” Katz breathed.

“IS THIS ABOUT YOUR RECENT SEARCH ABOUT MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE? SHOULD I BE SEEING THIS?” the Computer asked.

Katz reached out and switched the monitor off.

“OH, REAL NICE,” said the speakers.

“I want you to know that you are not to talk about what I keep in the basement,” Katz said.

“How long have they been down there?” Courage whined.

“Four months,” Katz replied. Courage gagged and Katz glowered at him. “And as you can see, they have not harmed anyone in this house.”

“That’s kind of specific! They’ve been harming other people, huh?”

Katz stared at him like he was a rare and precious variety of peculiarly stupid butterfly. Upon reflection, Courage had to admit that that wasn’t particularly unwarranted.

“So what’s wrong with that shy one? How come you didn’t let Fred just get eaten?” Courage asked, switching tactics.

Katz’s mouth twisted for a few seconds. “She can’t hunt. She was laying her eggs,” he admitted at last.

Courage tried to digest that. “WHAT!” he screeched.

Katz squeezed his mouth shut, holding his cheeks so that his lips pooched out. “Will you be silent!” the cat hissed. “They’ll think I’m murdering you and I’d rather not deal with the headache when I won’t even get to enjoy the experience!”

Courage whined.

“This is not the catastrophe you want to claim it is. I can’t keep an eye on all those spiderlings for long,” Katz went on. “As soon as they’re mature enough to hunt, I’m going to take them and put them in some of my motels and clubs, where they’ll be able to fend for themselves. But they’ve got to stay here, for now. And if anyone finds out about them,” he added, leaning down deep into Courage’s space, “they will never find so much as the smear of your remains.”

Courage moaned and Katz released his face. “Ugh, but why? I hate spiders!”

“I feel differently,” Katz said coldly, “although I’m sure your opinion is shared by most of the household. The spiders that lived here before were pretty handily wiped out between that idiotic duck, his mallet, and the foot’s tendency to stomp vulnerable things flat. That is not going to happen to my pets, am I perfectly clear?”

Courage whimpered. “Ooooh. Fine. I won’t tell anyone. But if they come up here and start trying to spin webs--!”

“They will not,” Katz said. He crossed his arms. “I will rely upon your discretion, dear boy. And if you breathe a word of this…”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Courage groused. He sighed. He hated keeping secrets! Especially creepy ones! It almost never ended well. “What’s up with the doilies, anyway?” he asked.

For the first time, Katz looked embarrassed. “Ah. Well. When almost everything in your day-to-day existence involves spinning in some context or another, you tend to be a little tense around creatures that don’t do anything of the sort.” He plucked at a nonexistent bit of lint on his shirtsleeve. “They find it easier to relax around me if I am spinning some kind of web, too.”

Courage took a second to think about that. “You do it so they’ll cuddle up to you?” he asked, wincing. “And you want that?”

Katz scowled and snarled. “How absurd. Of course not.”

Bullshit, Courage thought.

“Oh, all right,” he said. “Well. Do you want to threaten me about anything else or can I go back to what I was doing?”

Katz lifted his eyebrows and looked down his nose at Courage. “Don’t talk back, boy. It’s rude.”

“Sorry,” Courage said, a little sarcastically.

Katz nodded once and left the room.

“TEMPER, TEMPER,” said the Computer.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Courage grumbled.

***

He woke up, bones rattling with the sobs that had chased him out of his dreams.

He missed her so much. She was everything to him and now she was gone and there wasn’t a second of the day that he didn’t feel how much he missed her.

He was hiccuping by the time Katz rolled over in bed and grabbed him. The cat sat upright and hauled Courage up with him, holding him in his lap.

Courage sobbed and shook, unable to stop, as Katz slowly petted his fur. After a few minutes of steady stroking, the cat sighed and Courage jumped as something warm and raspy brushed his ear.

“I know, dear boy,” Katz breathed. “I know.”

Katz glanced down at him in the dark and brushed his tongue across the back of Courage’s ear. Katz scratched gently at the base of his tail and Courage felt himself growing still with confused embarrassment. It felt really nice, but it was Katz, and also spiders, and Muriel, and…

He was so tired.

“It’s all right,” Katz murmured, licking the top of Courage’s head. “Calm down, now. It’s too late at night for this. You need to sleep.”

Courage moaned quietly, the sound trailing off an in “eep” as Katz rolled Courage beneath him. Courage stared up at him and his eerie slitted eyes as the cat leaned down close to him and lightly licked his forehead.

Katz closed his eyes and put his head on the pillow, one arm slung over Courage’s body. He pulled Courage close, curling around him and sighing quietly.

They lay still for a few moments.

“It just bloody figures that it would take treating you like a kitten to make you settle down,” Katz rumbled.

Courage rolled his eyes and sighed, listening. Katz vibrated against him. “Are you purring?”

Katz tightened his grip. “Balderdash.” His tail flicked up and curled around Courage.

Courage fell asleep with a smile.


	2. Wimbledon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Queen of the Black Puddle was trapped under the floorboards, Le Quack was heading for the electric chair, Big Toe was being held in a top-secret quarantine chamber, the Cajun Fox was trapped in a stew pot, and Courage had been taken captive by the eggplants, who were preparing to storm the house.
> 
> He knew who was to blame.
> 
> Wimbledon.

The Cajun Fox claimed it was “supper time” but Courage had his suspicions that that was a quirk of language. “Supper time” obviously didn’t mean the same thing to both of them. Courage would posit that the closest English variant to “supper time” was “rampaging insanity.”

Long ago, they’d dragged the basement table up into the kitchen, needing the extra space, and now it was overflowing with people, hands and arms reaching into the half dozen dishes before them. The Queen of the Black Puddle unhinged her jaws and ate what looked like nothing so much as a human leg in a few gory chomps. The Cajun Fox was eating turtle eyes by placing them in the handle of a spoon and catapulting upwards, catching them in midair with a crisp snap of his jaws. Big Toe and his little toes each had their faces dunked in their soup bowls. Le Quack was glowering around him at the ill-mannered feeding frenzy and carefully carving his fish with his silverware, his little fingers sticking up.

Courage was chewing his way through a stew that tasted of overcooked shrimp, snails, and red peppers. Beside him, Katz put down his empty teacup and unsheathed his claws with a soft snick.

Courage jumped and moaned. The cat gave him a thoroughly underwhelmed look before tapping his claws against his water glass, calling for order.

It took some pretty fierce tapping, but at last the chaos stilled enough for a voice to be heard. He retracted his claws and took a sip from the water glass.

“I have a brief announcement,” Katz said. “As you all know, the territory rights pertaining to the television remain the most hotly contested issue in the household.”

“Duh,” said the Cajun Fox, slamming an eyeball into the air. The Queen of the Black Puddle caught it and munched on it noisily.

Katz stared at the Cajun Fox for a few long seconds. “Yes. I mention this as a preface because I am staking a claim tomorrow and I will not tolerate any interruptions for the duration of the program.”

“Awfully high-handed of ya, bub,” Big Toe grumbled. Four voices added their agreement. “And what makes ya think we’re going to give ya your way?”

Katz unsheathed his claws once more, examining them nonchalantly. “If you cannot acquiesce to the agreement, I’m sure we can enter into some strenuous negotiations,” he replied. “But I warn you that I shall consider the life and limb of anyone who disputes with me to be forfeit.”

“All right, chili powder, I’ll bite,” said the Cajun Fox. “What’s going on?”

Katz blinked, looking around the table with his deadpan stare. “Wimbledon.” His voice was reverent, almost a sigh.

The Queen of the Black Puddle snorted.

“What’s Wimbledon?” asked the littlest toe. Big Toe growled and knocked his brothers into him. “Ow! What’d I say, what’d I say?”

“Ya mook,” Big Toe said, “it’s that big ping-pong contest.”

Katz’s left eye twitched once and Courage began to shake.

“No,” the cat said, “it is a tennis tourney. The tennis tourney. And I will not miss the final, not if I have to watch it on a pile of corpses.”

“That so?” the Cajun Fox grinned.

“You have my word of honor,” Katz replied.

“Your mouth is writing checks your ass can’t cash,” the Queen of the Black Puddle remarked placidly, waving a hand. “But watch your stupid match. It makes no difference to me.”

“When is it?” demanded Le Quack. “I have a long-standing appointment at three in the afternoon.”

“I expect that it shall begin first thing in the morning, although I do not know how long it will last,” Katz replied. “Under ordinary circumstances I would not dream of interrupting your...stories but I can only hope that it should not prove necessary in this case.”

Big Toe performed his equivalent of a shrug. “The boys and I are gonna be playing Internet poker all day. We don’t care.”

“Looks like you get your way, Red,” the Cajun Fox remarked. “We’ll keep out from underfoot--ah, no offense, Toe Jam.”

Katz leveled a look at Courage. Courage attempted an ingratiating smile and the cat lifted a skeptical eyebrow in return.

“We shall see,” Katz murmured.

***

Courage didn’t care about tennis, but he was dozing on the sofa by the time Katz appeared and folded himself into the armchair to watch. The soft sound of the television floated through the warm morning air. Courage stretched out happily and dozed.

“You absolute berk. Why would you go that deep?” Katz mumbled softly. Courage’s eyes popped open. Katz was speaking to the screen, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, watching the screen with intense focus.

Courage watched the match for a few instants. It was just two people beating a ball back and forth across a net. What was the big deal? He made a little noise of confusion.

“Hush now,” Katz murmured gently, attention entirely on the screen. “This is a very tense game.”

The ball was struck into someone’s territory and the muffled sound of polite applause came over the airwaves. Katz nodded, as if satisfied, and sat very, very still, ears up and alert.

Courage began to doze, bored with the action. Tennis was so subdued in comparison with some of the other sports he’d watched before. There wasn’t much to it but white clothes, British accents, and genteel encouragement from the fans. A perfect napping sport, in his opinion.

The room was perfectly still and quiet except for the quiet noise of the television.

One of the players on screen made a move that caused Katz’s breath to catch. In the same instant, a terribly familiar roar from outside shook the floor of the house. Katz’s hair stood on end as he hissed hatefully, head spinning to face the front door..

“She’s dead,” he growled, springing from his chair.

“No! No! No!” Courage howled and leapt from his spot on the sofa. He waved his hands back and forth and stood in front of Katz and the door, babbling. If Katz unleashed his temper now, it would all-out war and it wouldn’t stop until there wasn’t a living soul on the farm. “I’ll handle it, I’ll handle it!”

Katz narrowed his eyes at Courage and lifted him up by the scruff of the neck. “Will you, now?”

“Uh-huh! Uh-huh! Uh-huh!”

“Fine. Then I’m giving you an assignment. If you keep me from being disturbed for the duration of the match, I’ll be as tame as a house cat,” he said, smiling nastily. “If you can’t, then you and everyone in this house will be spider chow.”

Courage whined.

“And I _will_ have a bit of sport with you, first.”

Courage moaned, waving his limbs in midair.

“In fact, we’ll make a game of it right now. I’ll give you three strikes.” He glanced out the window. “We’ll call this one a ball, since you haven’t even tried yet. But if you can’t resolve it…” He let the threat hang in the air.

Courage whimpered.

Katz pushed their faces close together. “Are we sympatico, dear boy?”

“Yes!”

“Excellent.” Katz put Courage on the ground and nudged him towards the door with a foot. “There’s your first task. Go tell that watery man-eating bint to stifle herself.”

Courage stumbled outside. They had been enduring near-drought conditions for the past two weeks. To alleviate the strain on the crops and the Queen of the Black Puddle, the Hunchback and Big Toe had attached a sprinkler to the well. It was on full blast now, pelting the ground like a monsoon.

The Queen of the Black Puddle was jumping like a dolphin from puddle to puddle, hot in pursuit of a fleeing man in a striped sweater and a ski cap.

“Basil!” growled the Queen, trying to entice him with her voice as she reached out for the terrified burglar with long, clawed hands. “BASIL!”

“Le Quack, you filthy liar!” Basil bellowed at the house, “I left eel therapy for this job!”

Courage could hear the sound of Le Quack’s laughter upstairs and quivered with terror. “Not my fault, mon ami! To ze victor go ze spoils! I hope you can swim!”

“You dirty duck--AAAH!”

“Basil, darling, come HERE!”

“HUHUHU!”

Courage moaned.

How was he going to fix this?

***

Eventually, he managed to get Basil up onto the roof long enough for the Queen of the Black Puddle to get tired of leaping up towards the roof like a killer whale. The sprinkler had petered out and the sun was already drying up most of the water on the dusty earth.

“Just a bite!” the Queen wheedled.

“No!” Courage wailed. “He’s a friend of the family!”

“Not this family, angelfish! Come on down, Basil dear…”

“Not a chance, Cousin Philippa!” Basil replied.

“Won’t you please let him go?!” Courage moaned.

The Queen of the Black Puddle huffed and crossed her arms. “You’re not serious!”

“Please?!” Courage begged, looking down at her with teary eyes.

The Queen of the Black Puddle sighed. “Fine. But only for you. I’ll go get someone else. Basil, you don’t know what you’re missing out on,” she declared, and sank into one of the remaining puddles without even the merest splash.

Courage heaved a sigh of relief. He beckoned Basil to follow him down to the truck.

“Well, all right, Nigel, I suppose you haven’t steered me wrong yet,” Basil agreed, clambering down from the roof.

“Turning tail so soon?” Le Quack taunted from the attic window. Courage moaned as he saw Katz glower at him through the living room window. Courage began gesturing frantically at Le Quack.

“Le Quack, you scheming bugger!” Basil bellowed, shaking his fist as Courage tried to cram him into the truck. “There’ll be hell to pay for this, you mark my words!”

The duck laughed as Courage managed to pack the eel masseuse into the truck and drive away. He tried to keep up with Basil’s delusion long enough to drop him off in the city. Once the man was back in his apartment, Courage turned around and headed back to the farm, hoping the police wouldn’t notice a dog driving a flatbed pickup.

By the time he returned, the farm was quiet once more. Katz’s left ear twitched towards him as he opened the door, but it proved not to damage the cat’s concentration enough to count. Courage carefully made his way over to the sofa and curled up once more.

The tennis players were much more sweaty and had begun to grunt. One of them slammed the ball into the other’s court and Katz hissed, “Yes!”

Then the kitchen exploded in a cacophonous shriek and an exuberant “Whoo, dear!” Katz and Courage jumped in their seats, the cat clutching at his chest as Courage screamed and an acrid, spicy smell permeated the air.

Katz turned on Courage with a vicious expression. “Strike one,” he hissed.

Courage ran, yelling, into the kitchen.

***

The Cajun Fox was standing in front of the stove with a wooden spoon and a hand on his hip. “What’s the rumpus, fella?”

“Why are you making so much noise?!” Courage cried.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“The pot’s screaming!”

“What? Of course the Screaming Parrots are screaming, jellybean,” the Cajun Fox said. “What would you be doing if you had been plucked alive and stuck in a stewpot?”

Courage whined. “Well, what about those?” he demanded, pointing at the barking lumps in the sink.

“The Shouting Oysters? Delicious! They’ll go in when the parrots settle down.”

“But--”

“And don’t even talk to me about the Shriek Peppers.”

“But--”

“Or the Screech Wort. It’s an old family recipe and I need it all,” the Cajun Fox said, dicing a vegetable that began to wail as he cut it. He lifted the lid of the stewpot to slide the vegetables in and the kitchen shook with the released scream before the fox could get the lid back on.

The Cajun Fox rapped on side of the pot with a wooden spoon. “Scream all you like, now! You’re only making the broth better!”

Courage moaned. From the living room, he could hear a low growl.

He acted quickly. He grabbed the plastic wrap from one of the kitchen drawers and ran around the room, sealing it in a plasticky casing. The sounds from outside the kitchen grew muffled and soft and, Courage had to hope, the sound from inside didn’t escape, either.

“Now, what’d you go and do that for?” asked the Cajun Fox, laughing. “Crazy dog. You know I’ll give you your fill without you trappin’ us in a bubble.”

Courage sat against the wall, panting.

“Let me see now. Six Screaming Parrots, twelve Shouting Oysters, two Shriek Peppers, just a dash of Screech Wort, and...a basso profundo?” the Cajun Fox yelped. “I ain’t got one of those!”

Courage whined. “No, no, no!”

“Well, I’m going to just have to get me one,” the Cajun Fox decided. “Dog, do me a favor and keep this here on a low simmer until I get back. You just can’t have a Commendatore Special without a dramatic bass.”

Courage whimpered.

“Now, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. You just sit tight with that there soup and I’ll be back in nothing flat, with a big fat opera singer to throw in.”

The Cajun Fox tore through the wrapping around the back door and ambled outside. Courage danced from foot to foot in front of the screaming stewpot, before yanking it off the stove and shoving it, the Shouting Oysters, the Shriek Peppers, and the Screech Wort into the refrigerator. He looped a chain around it, put a padlock on the chain, and wrapped the whole thing in fluffy pink insulation until it was silent.

He wiped the sweat off of his forehead. The wrath of the Cajun Fox would be bad, but at least no one would get fed to spiders if Courage crossed him. He might be able to get out of this one alive.

Courage very carefully took down the plastic wrap and peeked out into the living room. The tip of Katz’s tail was twitching, but he was leaning forward in the armchair with his paws steepled before him, attention captured by the game. Courage squinted at the board, wishing he understood the scoring or even knew which player Katz was rooting for. It would be a relief to have some kind of insight into Katz’s mood.

Katz blindly reached out and placed a hand on Courage’s head, gently scratching him between the ears. Courage took a few steps closer. There was still a strong possibility that Katz was going to attempt bloody retribution for the noise pollution, but Courage was willing to try and lower his blood pressure if he could.

Courage hopped up on Katz’s lap and let the cat pet him as they watched the match. Every now and then Katz’s hand would pause, pads of the paw pressing into Courage’s skin lightly as the cat held his breath, the tension of the match too much to divide his focus between the players and the dog on his lap.

Courage was just dozing off again when the next catastrophe broke. There was a loud banging on the ceiling of the living room and the sound of racing, flat-footed steps.

“Merde!”

“Damn! It’s the feds!”

“Do you zink I do not know zat, you stupid foot?”

Katz looked down at Courage and unsheathed two claws.

Courage moaned and got to the floor. “Really?”

Katz’s eyes narrowed and he leaned close, ears flat. He touched the razor tip of one of his claws to the soft and vulnerable flesh beneath Courage’s chin. “Do you doubt me, dear boy?”

“No!” Courage cried, trying to edge away as the claw pressed against his skin. “No! No!”

“Good. Off you go. And remember. My spiders are very hungry,” Katz said, retracting his claws and deliberately turning his eyes back to the television.

***

Courage was getting tired.

Le Quack and Big Toe were upstairs in the attic. Le Quack was frantically typing on the computer while Big Toe peered out the window.

“It’s the G Men, see,” Big Toe explained.

“LOUSY FEDS,” the Computer agreed.

Courage came over to look and immediately began whining. Outside, a dozen police cars with flashing red-and-blue lights waited. Officers pointed their guns at the house, the window, and occasionally, each other.

“You ignorant fungus, it is a far more serious issue zan mere federal agents,” Le Quack groused. “Basil squealed! If I cannot erase everything in ze next few seconds--”

The computer’s screen flickered. “OH. OH DEAR. WHAT IS THIS? I--”

“Fils de pute!” Le Quack hissed.

“Monsieur Le Docteur, is zat any way to speak to a lady?” a voice from the computer asked. The screen flickered once more, depicting a stylish weasel wearing a lot of eye makeup and holding a cigarette.

“La Flic,” Le Quack said through gritted teeth. “You will never take me alive!”

“Au contraire, mon cher ami,” the weasel said. “We already have you surrounded.”

Outside, the Sheriff had found a bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!” cried the Sheriff.

“We don’t got no hands!” cried the little toe.

“Hell with this!” Big Toe declared. “We’re going to shoot our way out!”

“No, no, no!” screamed Courage.

La Flic’s eyebrows bounced up and she peered at Courage through the screen. “What bizarre company you keep these days, Le Quack. I thought you were above this kind of thing.”

“Do not make zis personal, you wily temptress,” Le Quack said, cupping a feathery wing around the side of the webcam, blinding it from seeing Courage. “No cage can hold me, La Flic, no matter how you may try.”

“I do not want to hold you,” said La Flic, tapping the ash off of her cigarette. “I only want to see justice served.”

“Do you expect me to beg?” Le Quack demanded.

“No, Doctor Le Quack,” replied La Flic, “I expect you to fry.”

“Too much talk!” Big Toe declared, in a chorus of “yeahs!” “We’re bustin’ out of here!”

Courage moaned as Big Toe kicked through the side of the house, breaking out onto the roof of the porch. Big Toe sprang off of the porch roof and flew up to the roof of the house.

“Oh my God!” cried the Sheriff. “What the hell is that thing?”

“Come and get me, coppers! Ducky, throw me some heat!” Big Toe barked.

“Pardonnez-moi,” Le Quack said to La Flic. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. He reached beneath the desk and produced a Thompson gun. He leaned out from around the side of the remaining wall and threw the gun up to Big Toe.

“Duck and cover, boys!” the Sheriff screamed and Courage moaned as he heard the staccato blast of the bullets and Big Toe’s insane laughter.

They were spider chow.

Le Quack sighed. “Well, zat’s going to end badly.”

“I have dispatched someone to take care of him,” asked La Flic. “I cannot have him making such a nuisance of himself.”

“I hope you do not expect me to do something equally dramatic?” Le Quack asked, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his wing. He stuck a fag in his bill and lit it, leaning back against the remains of the wall.

“I would never ask that of you,” La Flic replied. “Gentlemen?”

Courage yelped as the floorboard beneath his feet was roughly dislodged. A man in a Kevlar vest had the floorboard stuck to his back and was holding a gun on Le Quack. Six other men had melted from the woodwork of the room and had their sights trained on the con man.

Le Quack blew out a stream of smoke, dropped his cigarette, and extinguished it beneath one webbed foot. He held up his hands. “My congratulations, mademoiselle...well, for however long zis arrest lasts.”

“It will last until the end of your life. Arrest him,” La Flic said.

The armed men handcuffed Le Quack and marched him down through the house. Some frantic babbling got them to leave through the hole Big Toe had made in the wall instead of passing through the living room. By the time they were outside, a helicopter was lifting the still-defiant but chained Big Toe off of the roof of the house.

Courage moaned. “Where are you taking them?”

“The bird’s got a date with the chair,” said the man who had been impersonating a houseplant for God knew how long. “And I can’t speak for the foot.”

“No!” Courage cried. “You can’t kill him!”

Without Le Quack or Big Toe, the balance of power would shift! The Queen of the Black Puddle, the Cajun Fox, and Katz might finally agree on a way to kill him!

“Too bad, pup,” said the gunman, and slammed the door of the car. The police blockade drove away, leaving a plume of dust and a sudden, thorough silence.

Courage moaned. “What am I going to do?”

***

He needed help.

Courage was nearly at his third strike. No way he could ask Katz for help.

The Cajun Fox was still out when Courage checked the kitchen. The fox had said he’d only be fifteen minutes, and now it was a good hour and a half since he’d left. Courage whined, worried, and tried to find the Queen of the Black Puddle.

He found her, bumping against the dry dirt outside.

She was making a bulge in the ground, slamming herself against it again and again, trying to get out of the last space through which she’d entered her realm. Courage could hear her screaming her frustration.

“Hold on! I’ll get you out!” he cried, running over to the well and pumping the handle hard. He pumped and pumped for several seconds, but the only liquid that appeared was the sweat coating him from head to foot.

The well was dry.

And that meant--

“There he is! Get ‘im!”

Courage screamed and kicked and fought as a surge of livid purple eggplants burst out from beneath the dusty crust of the ground and overwhelmed him. They held him down and tied him up in vines, dragging him down to the underworld with them.

***

Every house is a veritable death trap. Between the fire and sharp edges in the kitchen, the possibility of drowning in the bath, or the thousand chances to electrocute oneself by turning on a light, it was virtually impossible to do enough to secure one’s safety even in the privacy of their home.

But one had to prioritize. Even if there were a million ways to die within the house (particularly if one had monsters as housemates), the greatest threats came from outside. If one had to do anything to try and stay safe, the most important thing to remember was:

Never.

EVER.

Let the garden go to pot.

Courage knew that. He had no excuse.

He was lying on the ground, wondering if his circumstances might have been different if he’d still had his eggplant costume.

The eggplants had their huge screen split into many different video feeds. One showed how the Queen of the Black Puddle was beating against the sealed portal to the farm, thrashing in the dim green water around her castle. Another showed Le Quack in an orange jumpsuit, being walked down the hallway towards the electric chair. Big Toe was yelling soundlessly from within a glass enclosure as scientists in quarantine suits wandered around a large room. A fourth feed was trained on the Cajun Fox, covered in flour, sitting in a large stew pot and wriggling against his bindings and gag as a fat chef tossed chopped onions on his head; the open cookbook at the chef’s elbow had a recipe for Cajun Fox Stew.

The last feed showed Katz in the living room, face nearly pressed to the television screen, tail twitching and claws gouging into the arms of the chair.

“They’re all distracted! Now is our moment, my eggplant brothers!” Bobby Ganoush announced. The eggplants cheered.

“Zey need to be puneeshed for zeir wastefulness!” Ratatouille cried. The eggplants bounced up and down, yelling their approval.

“Too long have we languished in this drought while she wasted precious water!” Ganoush declared, striking the image of the Queen of the Black Puddle with a pointer. “Too long have we trembled in fear as he hopped through the garden!” Big Toe was next. “Too long have we lived in terror, waiting as he licked his chops and talked about eggplant medallions with crawfish cream sauce!”

“What about the duck?” called a small voice in the back of the crowd.

“Who cares about the duck!” Ganoush barked. “Now that we have captured Muriel’s spy, our anger will go unchecked! The time is ripe! Attack!”

Courage moaned. The eggplants picked up the call and followed Ganoush and Ratatouille to the surface. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

And he was left alone.

Courage lay on the ground for some moments and really thought about his situation. He wasn’t about to put any money down on who would win in a fight between Katz and the eggplants. That was one that would have to go to the judges. He knew he didn’t want to get involved, but he had a terrible feeling that he was going to, anyway. Who knew what they would do to him if and when they got back?

And after all, it was his house. Even if it was full of monsters, he should protect it.

He looked up at the screen, watching how the Queen of the Black Puddle tore at her prison with her long, sharp nails. Le Quack had his chin up and was smirking calmly to himself as he was lead to his death. Big Toe’s enclosure was filling with a greenish gas and he was kicking violently against the glass walls. The fat chef ignored the desperate thrashing of the Cajun Fox’s head and fit the lid on the stew pot.

Ohhh…

Courage took a huge breath, flexed all his muscles, and thrashed and thrashed and thrashed until the ropes came loose. They pooled around his feet and he took off running.

The first thing to do was get some back up. He ran to the barn, yelling for the Hunchback and Theodore.

“Courage?” the Hunchback asked. He’d been playing the bells in the hayloft. Theodore looked up from War and Peace with a confused grunt.

Courage babbled at him, trying to explain the situation.

“Oh,” the Hunchback said. “Yes, I see. We’ll distract those eggplants long enough for you to get us some water. Come on, Theodore.”

Courage ran to the screaming bulge at the side of the house. He opened his mouth and tried to think of his favorite foods. Happy plums. Toffee apples. Oh, blackberry pie. And the God Bone!

He sighed with bliss, drooling on the bulge.

The Queen of the Black Puddle exploded out of the ground, landing on her rear on the dirt beside the puddle of drool, a little bruised from throwing herself so violently against her prison. She held up both dripping arms, looking at them with a grimace of disgust. She glanced at Courage.

“Oh,” she shuddered, “please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

Courage laughed sheepishly and began trying to explain the situation.

The Queen was wringing out her hair. “You think we should rescue them? You strange little dog. I thought you would have run away by now.”

Courage whined. “It’s my house!”

The Queen of the Black Puddle shrugged. “All right, if you insist. Come with me.”

“What?”

“If the nearest portal wasn’t fifty miles away, I would have gotten out some other way. But I’m sure the prison, the lab, and the kitchen all have running water, unlike the farm,” the Queen of the Black Puddle said. “We’ll swim and get there in time to save them.”

Courage looked at the puddle and whimpered. “You promise you won’t drown me?”

The Queen of the Black Puddle grinned. “I promise I’ll get you where you need to go, one way or the other,” she replied, scratching him under the chin. “But if you die in the water, I will eat you.”

Courage whined. “Ohhh...I don’t really have a choice! Fine. Just hang on.”

Courage ran around to the front of the house. The Hunchback was playing his bells and Theodore was hula dancing in front of the transfixed eggplants. The Hunchback gave Courage a wink as he hurried into the house, snuck past the living room, and ran upstairs.

He grabbed an oxygen tank out of the bedroom closet and carefully made his way back through the house.

Katz hadn’t moved. He seemed entirely immersed in the action on screen, his ears perked up and tail barely moving.

Courage sidled past him and ran to the well pump. He grabbed it and hurried back to the diminishing puddle, jamming the pump in the ground and frantically tugging on the handle.

“What are you doing?” asked the Queen of the Black Puddle, standing with her hands on her hips beside him.

Courage kept pumping and soon green water from the Queen’s lair gushed out of the pump and into a bucket.

“Yes!” Courage cried. He waved his arms over his head, jumping up and down until the Hunchback saw him. The Hunchback nodded and shooed them off. They would take care of the eggplants.

The Queen of the Black Puddle blew her boyfriend a kiss, grabbed Courage and his oxygen tank, and dove into the bucket.

***

The Queen of the Black Puddle’s realm was just as terrifying as Courage remembered. The bones of past victims littered the floor of the briny deep and her evil castle leered at him beyond its spiky gates. He trembled, looking at the necklaces still looped around the dead men’s necks, and the pass of the Queen’s hand across his soaked fur did nothing to calm him.

“Don’t worry, dogfish,” the Queen said, “we’re almost there.”

Courage could see small points of light above and ahead of them. The Queen of the Black Puddle sped towards them, hovering beneath them here and there.

“Any last words, Le Quack?” came a voice, distorted by the water.

“There!” the Queen of the Black Puddle chirped. “Up you go!”

Courage screamed as she hurled him upward. He went flying out of an unfortunate man’s coffee cup and through the viewing section of the execution room, falling with a thump beside the electric chair and Le Quack. He giggled madly for an instant or two and the guard began to pull out his gun, only to pause dazedly and turn to look at the viewing booth.

The Queen of the Black Puddle was emerging and had the attention of every man in the room, especially the man with the coffee.

“Hey!” the man yelled, only to fall quickly under the thrall of the Queen. “I mean...hey.”

The Queen of the Black Puddle grinned, reaching for the man’s chin, but a sharp, cigarette-wielding paw smacked her hand.

“Stop!” La Flic shouted. “Stop! Where are the guards?”

The Queen of the Black Puddle knocked La Flic away and pulled herself out of the coffee cup.

“We don’t need any guards,” cooed the Queen of the Black Puddle. The men in the room nodded, hypnotized.

Le Quack clicked his tongue to get Courage’s attention and strained against the leather straps binding him to the chair. Courage quickly took advantage of the distraction and released Le Quack.

The con man leapt to his feet and grabbed a guard’s gun. “Nobody moves!” the duck cried, firing three rounds into the ceiling and almost deafening everyone in the room. “Drop your weapons and get on the floor, you fools!”

The man with the coffee and the guards reached for their weapons with defiance writ large on their faces.

“Do it,” cooed the Queen.

The man with the coffee and the guards grunted and did as they were told, lying on their bellies on the ground.

La Flic pulled her weapon out and aimed it at Le Quack. “You will never leave this room alive, Le Quack!” the weasel shouted.

Le Quack’s eyes narrowed. “Do not make me kill you, ‘demoiselle,” he said. “I do not yet wish to end our chase.”

La Flic clasped both paws around her gun. “I _will_ shoot you,” she promised, hissing through her teeth.

“You will never be able to live with yourself,” Le Quack purred, a wicked smile beginning to appear on his face.

La Flic fired a warning shot near the duck’s foot. Courage dove and covered his ears, whimpering at the loud noise of the gun and trembling violently from terror.

Le Quack just smiled. “Madame la Reine,” he said, addressing the Queen of the Black Puddle, “Please disarm Mademoiselle La Flic.”

La Flic turned the gun on the Queen of the Black Puddle, who reached out and twisted the gun out of La Flic’s grip with one monstrously strong hand.

The Queen seized La Flic by the scruff of her neck and leapt down into the main chamber of the execution room. “A hostage always improves these kinds of situations,” the Queen of the Black Puddle said.

“Ah, oui,” Le Quack agreed. “An excellent idea.” He plucked his own handcuffs off of the prone body of the guard and bound La Flic’s hands behind her back.

“You’re never get away with this, Le Quack,” La Flic hissed. “I’ll see you dead first!”

“Give her to me,” Le Quack instructed. The Queen passed the weasel to Le Quack, who held her close against him with his gun pointed at her temple and his mouth near her ear. “Ah, mon adversaire, il est tres formidable de se sentir si proche que vous de nouveau.”

“Tu fils de pute!”

“Huhuhuhuhu,” Le Quack snickered. “Dog. Lead the way out that door. We are going to get a car. Madame la reine, bring up the rear, please. Allons, ma belle cherie, and no harm will come to you.”

La Flic growled.

Courage whined softly and opened the double door. A hearse was waiting a few steps away, anticipating the body of the dead duck. There were two more guards, but the combined persuasion of the hostage situation and the Queen of the Black Puddle had them lying on their faces soon enough.

“You drive,” Le Quack told Courage. Shaking, Courage jumped into the driver’s seat and turned on the engine. “Madame, if you would sit in the back...merci. And you, my dear La Flic…” Le Quack opened the passenger door and slid himself in very slightly.

“Adieu!” he cried, before releasing his grip on the policewoman and kicking her forward, hard.

“Go, go, go!” he shouted, slamming the car door.

Courage stepped on the gas and they roared away from the prison, crashing through a chain link fence and hurtling towards the highway, even as La Flic shouted curses after them.

Le Quack laughed madly and managed to get Courage out of the driver’s seat and take his place. He buried the needle, swerving back and forth through traffic. “Bonjour, mes amis! What a surprise to see you here. I was not expecting you.”

“The dog is worried about the household,” the Queen of the Black Puddle said, flicking the safety on her new handgun and slipping it into her sleeve. “And Katz isn’t being helpful. So it’s our problem, now.”

“Ah, mais oui. I cannot say I am surprised zat ze cat is being difficult. So we are to be ze heroes now?”

“I want to say we should just kill Courage while we have him here,” said the Queen of the Black Puddle, patting Courage’s head. “But he did get me out of my lair when I was trapped, and he did just save you from the electric chair…”

“Well, who else is in peril?” asked Le Quack.

Courage began babbling and the duck nodded quickly.

“Oui, I see,” the duck said. He glanced at the Queen of the Black Puddle in the rear-view mirror. “Well, one way or ze other I like living at ze farm. It is convenient and it is even more so when zere is someone to do ze cooking and ze manual labor.”

“You have a point,” the Queen murmured, stroking Courage’s ear.

“Well, let’s go get zem,” Le Quack said. “It is no small zhing to have a life-debt over either ze foot or ze fox, anyway. It could come in handy.”

The Queen of the Black Puddle nodded. “Well, let’s find a water fountain, then.”

***

Chef Reni Desjardins had just added some good, briny water to his pot of Cajun Fox stew when the soup pot exploded, spraying carrots, leeks, potatoes, frog lips, turtle eyes, and bacon bits everywhere.

Chef Reni had spent an entire lifetime feeding hungry mouths. He spent the last few seconds of that lifetime doing precisely that, although in a somewhat more literal sense than usual.

While the Queen of the Black Puddle struggled to swallow the chef, Courage untied the Cajun Fox and removed his gag.

“Whoo, Lord!” the Fox yowled. “I think he baked my ham! Hang on a sec, pup, I’ve gotta rinse some’a this stock off’a me. Good evenin’, Queenie! Glad to see you got a bite to eat!”

The Queen of the Black Puddle was dabbing her lips with a newly-abandoned apron. “At last,” she agreed. “We should hurry. Le Quack’s waiting with the car.”

“What a day! And can you believe,” the Cajun Fox said to Courage, as he pulled the sink hose out of the faucet and gave himself an impromptu shower right there in the middle of the kitchen, “I still didn’t get me a basso profundo? We’re just going to have to have something else for dinner.”

Courage moaned.

***

Special Agent Bulder placed a hand on the glass window that separated himself and his partner from the quarantine room. “This is incredible.”

Special Agent Stully frowned. “Well, yes, but I don’t think we think that for the same reasons, Bulder.”

“What do you mean? We’re seeing the exact same organism. A living, sapient being with five distinct personalities. And I don’t think you could claim this thing is human.”

“Maybe not entirely human, but it does resemble parts of a human,” Stully replied. “And the tests came back indicating that it possesses human DNA.”

Special Agents Bulder and Stully watches as the giant foot beat against its enclosure. Several scientists busily scurried about in the quarantine chamber, running tests on the foot. It was hooked up to a dozen monitors and the agents could faintly hear the sound of the thing shouting.

“Why does it have that weird gangster accent?” Bulder wondered to himself.

“I think it really is a gangster,” Stully replied. “I mean, it’s committed tax fraud. I don’t think you find many extraterrestrials who develop such a good Edward G. Robinson impression and still find time to steal from Uncle Sam.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Bulder said.

Stully was about to disagree as a scientist turned on the faucet to sterilize his hands. Out of the tap squeezed a small pink dog, a fox wearing sunglasses, and a beautiful woman with long purple hair.

The Special Agents stared.

The small pink dog hurried over to a console. The fox came out swinging, punching out two scientists before crouching down so he and the beautiful woman could tabletop a third.

The dog hit the buttons on the console until the glass chamber containing the foot was opened and the foot tore away from its monitors, hopping into the main atrium. It squished three scientists while the fox gave one of the remaining researchers a wedgie.

Stully hurried to the door and entered the access code. The door beeped and locked itself. She pulled on the handle, trying to break in.

“The dog must have tripped the lock!” she said, wishing she didn’t have to say those words. Just once she’d like to get through a trip with Bulder without having to say something so patently ridiculous.

The beautiful woman with long purple hair floated to the side of the room opposite the agents and opened the industrial door. She waved for the others to follow her and the fox, dog, and foot ran out of the room.

The Special Agents looked at each other. Bulder whipped out his mobile phone and began to call for backup.

“Okay,” sighed Stully, as he waited for the call to pick up. “Fair enough. Stranger things have happened.”

***

Courage, the Cajun Fox, the Queen of the Black Puddle, and Big Toe raced through the halls of a military industrial complex. Trained soldiers turned guns on them and fell beneath the Queen’s persuasion. And anybody who stood in the way just got crushed beneath Big Toe or elbowed aside by the Cajun Fox.

“Where’s Quackers?” Big Toe demanded as they pounded down one hall, hung a hard right, and sped down the next corridor.

“He’s finding us a getaway van,” the Cajun Fox said. “Hard port, pup!”

They skidded to the left and saw a pair of double doors at the end of the hall. Courage and the Cajun Fox dropped to all fours and the Queen of the Black Puddle floated double-time all the way out. Big Toe was hot on their heels and they could all hear the coming soldiers trying to track them down.

They reached the midway point of the hallway when a metal panel was began sliding down over the glass door. The Cajun Fox broke out ahead and darted beneath the panel, holding the door open. Courage bolted out beneath the metal plate, too, but it was already too low for the Queen of the Black Puddle to make it, much less Big Toe.

“Ohhh!” Courage cried, reaching towards them.

The Queen of the Black Puddle heaved a disgusted sigh and stopped, wringing out her hair right on the floor. When she had a puddle made, she grabbed Big Toe.

“Whoa! Hey, girlie, I ain’t gonna be your dinner!” Big Toe yelled.

The metal panel clanged against the floor just as the Queen dove into the puddle.

Then there was silence, except for the distant siren deep within the facility.

“Well?” asked the Cajun Fox. “Where’d they go?”

A white van roared up over the curb and onto the lawn beside them. Le Quack was behind the wheel. “And where are ze others?”

Courage whined, looking around. He didn’t see any liquid nearby. Maybe they were trying to go back to the farm? Big Toe would probably drown by then, even if he didn’t really think the Queen of the Black Puddle would eat _him_.

In the guardhouse nearby, the snoring guard was awoken when his Big Gulp exploded. He was covered in a spray of Coca Cola and crushed against the side of the box by the suddenly-appearing bulk of a beautiful woman and a gargantuan foot.

He started screaming.

“Oh, shut up,” grumbled the Queen of the Black Puddle, dripping with soda and kicking at the door. “Come on, Hop-Along.”

“After you, girlie.”

Courage spotted them as they left the guard house and hurried over to the white van. “Yes!” he cried, dancing from foot to foot.

Le Quack winced when he saw the state they were in. “You two are sitting in the back.”

“Shotgun!” chirped the Cajun Fox.

***

Fortunately, it turned out that they were in Roswell. It was only a ten hour drive back to Nowhere, and with Le Quack behind the wheel, they made it in seven.

Courage spent most of the ride clinging to the passenger’s overhead handle. Le Quack had never really learned to drive as much as he’d learned to escape.

They pulled up to the farmhouse to find Katz, the Hunchback, and Theodore on the porch. The Queen of the Black Puddle embraced her lover and kissed him on his bulging eye, taking his hand and cuddling up to his side.

“Well, here you all are,” Katz said, blowing out a stream of cigarette smoke. “I was wondering what had become of you. I was beginning to fear you may have designs on the boy.”

“Nah, velvet cake. We had bigger fish to fry than the pup,” the Cajun Fox said. “How does dinner sound to everyone? I could just kill for eggplant medallions in crawfish cream sauce.”

“Funny you should mention that,” said the Hunchback. “There’s half a dozen eggplants in the refrigerator, right next to a pot of Screaming Parrots.”

“You got that off the stove? Good man! I thought it might burn through,” said the fox, heading into the house.

“Let’s go watch,” said the Queen of the Black Puddle, pulling her boyfriend along with her.

Theodore snored quietly from his corner of the porch.

Big Toe hopped through the door. “If anybody needs me, tell ’em to buzz off. I’m taking a good long footbath. Stinkin’ feds.”

Katz offered Le Quack a cigarette. The duck produced one of his own and lit it on the cat’s proffered flame.

“I,” said Le Quack, “am going for a walk. I need some time to think.”

“Au revoir,” said Katz, somewhat sardonically.

The duck wandered away and Courage couldn’t quite contain the soft whine in the back of his throat as he tried to edge around Katz and get in the house without attracting the cat’s attention. One of Katz’s ears perked up and he slowly turned his head to blink at Courage.

“So fearful, dear boy? I promised you. ‘Tame as a housecat’ were my exact words.” Katz took a drag of his cigarette, watching Courage.

Courage took a hesitant step closer. Katz didn’t react. Courage took another step and settled down on the porch with a sigh.

Katz’s hand alighted on his head and stroked gently. “It wasn’t exactly quiet,” Katz said, “but I suppose it would have been much worse if you hadn’t gone to deal with one thing and another.”

Courage relaxed and closed his eyes under the petting. Katz’s words were critical, but Courage could hear him purring.

“I only hope things will go more smoothly next year.”

Courage’s eyes blinked open, staring at Katz, aghast. “Next year?” he whimpered.

“Oh yes. It’s quite an annual event,” Katz said. “Next year we’ll have to try and catch the whole two weeks of matches.”

Courage didn’t stop screaming until the Hunchback came out and brought him in.

Katz had the decency to look embarrassed.


	3. Wild Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabin fever is beginning to get to everyone and Katz has the perfect solution.
> 
> And like all of Katz's solutions, it creates much more trouble than it resolves.
> 
> [Contains references to really copious drinking, BDSM culture played for laughs, Icona Pop's [On A Roll](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wywgggaj6cs), and Katy Perry's [Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJu0U8oVYbE).]
> 
>   **  
>  _Also, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, COULD[THIS](http://c2ndy2c1d.tumblr.com/post/93174462190/some-fanwork-i-did-for-bestdressedhotmesss-ctcd) BE FANART BY THE INIMITABLE C2NDY2AC1D? I DO DECLARE IT IS!_  
> **

Katz had never believed that only boring people got bored. Boring people were never bored, if only because they never truly knew how boring they were. Interesting people had a much higher likelihood of becoming bored, because of their unfortunate fate to be born into a terribly tedious world. The higher the climb, the harder the fall, after all.

And no matter what else one wanted to say about his new housemates, they were at the very least extremely interesting.

Katz had not survived as long as he had by being insensible of the moods of people around him. He might not always care, but he always knew. So when he saw that Le Quack was getting fidgety and the Cajun Fox was cooking more and more elaborate meals, he knew what was going on. Cabin fever was beginning to infect the house.

Katz kept an eye on the others, wary of the tension. They might be a happy little powder keg of incompatible personalities now, but no matter how much camaraderie had developed in the past months, he knew they’d react the same to a spark as if it was day one.

He tried to pick his moment. The dog became his barometer.

Katz supposed that one didn’t last long being a farm dog, much less the pet of a pair of elderly homebodies, if one wasn’t capable at managing boredom. Thank God the boy was capable of making his own, somewhat pathetic fun--Courage typically kept his hobbies to himself. Aside from food and a pat on the head, the boy was relatively self-sufficient.

For Katz, that meant that when the dog was close to snapping, something definitely had to give.

One afternoon, the vibrant sound of Tropicalisimo music awoke him from his doze in the armchair. Katz pulled the newspaper off of his face and walked over to the kitchen door, annoyed and morbidly curious.

The dog and the Bigfoot were alone in the kitchen, wearing banana skirts and elaborate fruit headdresses. They were performing a frighteningly well-choreographed samba and Katz leaned against the door jamb, uncertain how even to process what he was seeing. Certainly the boy was a little peculiar, but this was something else. 

“Not to interrupt,” Katz said, hoping very much to interrupt. Courage and the Bigfoot froze. The dog looked at him with terrified eyes. “But precisely what are you doing?”

Courage gulped. “Um. Um. Um.”

Katz nodded once. That was about what he expected. He stood up straight. “Get that kit off and come with me, boy. We’ve had just about enough of this.”

He left Courage in the kitchen and went to fetch the others.

Soon he had four sullen villains and one terrified dog in the living room. 

“We are going out,” Katz announced. 

“Out where?” asked the Cajun Fox.

“Out,” Katz replied. “Anywhere but here.”

“Why?” asked Big Toe. 

“Yeah!” demanded the little toes.

“Because we are all beginning to go spare, whether we recognize it or not,” Katz replied. “Tempers will begin to run high. Attitudes will develop. If we wish to maintain any kind of unity, I propose an evening away from the farm.”

“What, all of us, together?” scoffed the Queen of the Black Puddle.

“Regrettably,” Katz nodded. “I suppose one might consider it a bonding activity, hideous as the prospect is. At the moment, my only proposition is that we get dressed, get in the truck, drive into the city, and not return until dawn.” He let that sink in. “And of course, we’ll take the boy with us.”

“Oooh!” Courage moaned, unpleasantly surprised. “But--but--but--!”

“It is non-negotiable,” Katz pronounced. “We need to blow off some steam. I will expect to see you all down here in five minutes, ready to leave.”

“And if we ain’t?”

Katz stared at Big Toe. “Then the situation I am trying to avoid will be put on the fast track to its unfortunate realization,” Katz replied.

Five minutes later, they were ready to leave.

***

Katz liked to drive. He liked any activity that emphasized personal freedom while minimizing personal discomfort.

Of course, when a hayseed with bulging eyes and a loathsome hick accent was quarreling with him for piloting and radio privileges, it became a little less pleasant.

The Queen of the Black Puddle was in a water bottle clasped in Le Quack’s hands. The Cajun Fox sat between him and Katz and kept flicking through the stations every three seconds. Big Toe was packed into the truck bed and Courage was quivering in Katz’s lap.

“Calm down,” Katz murmured in the dog’s ear. He dreaded that that boy’s nervousness might get the better of his bladder control. He hadn’t known it to happen yet, but there was always a first time. His cautionary tone was almost certainly lost in the throbbing bass the Cajun Fox unleashed from the radio.

Katz hit the accelerator harder.

Courage began to whine as the exit for Nowhere appeared. Nowhere was the nearest town to the farm, but it was precisely that: a town. Katz had much bigger plans.

“There! We have to go there!” Courage insisted as they approached the exit. He moaned as Katz tore past it.

“No,” Katz said.

“But--but--!”

“I’ve had enough of Nowhere,” Katz replied. He smiled slightly as the first sign for their destination appeared on the highway.

They were going Somewhere.

***

The first thing to do was ditch the truck. Despite all the obvious benefits to having a getaway vehicle at the ready, parking in the city was notoriously difficult. Katz’s plans for an evening out demanded a lightness of baggage that could only come with proceeding on foot. 

To that end, they found a metro stop.

As they left the truck, Katz could see that his housemates were beginning to loosen up. They had poured the Queen of the Black Puddle out and she stretched as they headed for the fare gate. Le Quack was visibly analyzing the passers-by for easy marks and the Cajun Fox was grinning a manic, somewhat stupid-looking grin.

Katz passed Courage’s leash to the Cajun Fox. Despite the setting of the sun, the fox refused to remove his ridiculous glasses and Katz aimed to use that to their advantage. The dog was a terrible liar but surely even he could pass for a service dog, if it came down to it.

His housemates made their first mistake at the fare gate: they hesitated.

Katz did not. They had no farecards and more importantly, no money. Not yet. There was only one way to proceed and it was nothing new to him. He’d been doing this since before he could talk.

Summoning all his nonchalance, Katz idly hopped the fare gate and ambled up towards the escalators. After a few seconds he could hear the web-footed steps of Le Quack and the stomp of Big Toe not far behind.

Courage began babbling and Katz turned, regretting his decision to leave the dog in the hands of an idiot. He glanced over his shoulder in time to watch the laughing Cajun Fox lift the dog up over his head and jump the gate.

Katz hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he grumbled to himself, eyeballing the advancing metro security agents. The whole point of the exercise was to be perfectly natural. Nothing more quickly destroyed that illusion than hefting a terrified animal over your head and cackling.

“Hey! Stop!” one of the security officers shouted. The Cajun Fox began running up the escalator with the dog. 

“Merde,” grumbled Le Quack.

Katz agreed entirely. He ran the short distance to the platform. The train into the city was waiting nearby, a welcome piece of luck, and he darted into a train car, risking a limb by holding it open for the others.

Le Quack dove in without any trouble, but the foot had a slightly harder time.

“I ain’t gonna make it!” Big Toe panted. 

“You don’t have much of a choice, old sport,” Katz replied. The Queen of the Black Puddle threw herself against Big Toe and forced them both into the train. 

“Get in here, you idiot,” Katz hissed, dragging the Cajun Fox in by the neck. The train car doors snapped closed on the very tip of his tail and the fox let out a short screech, pulling out a few coppery hairs.

The hayseed still had the trembling dog in his grip. Katz took the boy from him and held Courage under one arm like a football. 

“Huhuhu! Au revoir, coppers,” Le Quack laughed, jauntily saluting the emerging security team as the train pulled away from the station.

“We’re just going to have to think of some other way to bring you along,” Katz grumbled to the dog, putting him down in one of the plastic seats. 

Courage whimpered.

“So where to next?” the Queen of the Black Puddle asked. She was smiling slightly and looked rather exhilarated by the short chase. “We’ve got no money, no plans, and we’ll have to hop a gate again to get out…”

“Ah, but Madame La Reine,” purred Le Quack, speaking for Katz, “making money is the simplest thing in the world.” 

“I know a couple’a places downtown where we can make some money on blackjack,” volunteered Big Toe. “I took a trip down this way a few years back. Got some good bars out that way, too.”

“As long as we find a place to eat, I don’t care where we go,” added the Cajun Fox. The loss of some of his tail’s fluff had not done irreparable damage to his mood. Katz wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

“That will do,” Katz agreed. “As long as we do something.”

***

Hopping the gate proved easier the second time, now that everyone knew what to expect. The others were successfully through when the dog suddenly stopped and refused to move. Katz pulled on his leash and the dog nearly slipped out of his collar, so desperate was he not to be tugged along.

“What are you doing?” Katz hissed. 

“This is wrong!” Courage cried. “We have to pay!”

“We don’t have any money,” Katz replied. “There’s literally nothing to pay them with!” Stupid, pampered dog! The old people really had taken care of him, if he had no concept of the necessity of breaking the rules.

“Well, then we shouldn’t have gotten on anyway!” Courage replied. “This isn’t right! Muriel would never have--”

“In case you haven’t noticed, boy, you’re not exactly with the old woman this evening,” Katz snapped. “Now get through the bloody turnstile or I’ll--”

“What? Feed me to your spiders?” Courage asked. The boy was tilting his chin up. He was trying to be brave.

Katz might have found that amusing, even appealing, under other circumstances. It was almost a shame to have to so merciless squash this interesting little rebellion now, but they had begun to attract the attention of unwanted eyes.

“Oh, no,” Katz said, low and quiet. “If you don’t do as I say, I’ll take you to the Home for Freaky Barbers and leave you with that psychotic stylist for a night.”

Courage’s eyes widened and he began to shake.

“Now come on,” Katz insisted.

“Okay, okay,” Courage replied, cowed. “You didn’t have to get nasty.”

Katz disagreed. 

The Queen of the Black Puddle had proven herself to be an eminently sensible and supportive team-mate by drawing the attention of the station attendants. Katz and Courage negotiated the fare gate quickly and were soon on the escalator to the surface with the rest of their companions.

The city was bustling. Night had fallen while they were in the subway and the night people had come out, walking up and down the boulevard, hailing taxis, pushing into restaurants and bars. At the entrance of the subway station a band of buskers played jazz for the crowd. 

Katz could already feel the tension rolling off of him, even as his senses kicked into a higher gear to maintain his situational awareness. He’d never done too well being isolated from the world--his schemes and his spiders suffered on the farm. Being alone too long had starved him and now he was surrounded by so many potential victims...he licked his chops distractedly, tightening his grip on the dog’s leash. He hardly knew where to start.

“Two blocks down and a block over,” instructed Big Toe. They ambled along the street in a loose bundle. Katz observed that the Cajun Fox’s stride lengthened and he walked with his pelvis jutting forward. The boy trotted along at their feet, trying to tangle himself and his leash up in Katz’s legs in an effort to avoid the city people. 

“We need to get a little money,” Katz murmured to the Queen of the Black Puddle. It had rained a few hours ago and already the damp filth of a night in the city was mixing with the remaining rain water. She swayed along in the gutter, stepping from wet patch to wet patch. 

“Le Quack must have some plan or another,” she replied. 

“I suggest we talk to ze gentleman at ze other end of ze block,” Le Quack grinned. “I zink he could be persuaded to make a generous donation to our cause, especially if we give him ze right...encouragement.”

“You want to boost him in an alleyway?” Katz replied, honestly surprised. It wasn’t at all a bad idea, but coming from Le Quack? “Isn’t that a trifle inelegant?”

“Oh, yes, how ridiculous of me, I forgot zat ze point evening spent bar-hopping is to preserve one’s dignity,” Le Quack replied.

It was hard to argue with that. Katz picked the dog up and held him despite his trembling and soft whining. “We will keep watch.”

Le Quack and the Queen of the Black Puddle looked askance at him for a moment or two before considering the dog. If the boy had objections to merely hopping a subway gate, God only knew what sort of fuss he’d kick up when they mugged a man.

Le Quack murmured a quick word to Big Toe. The foot nodded and he and The Queen of the Black Puddle strode ahead, letting the others hang back.

“I’ll scout ahead,” said the Cajun Fox. “Make sure we don’t have any surprises coming up.”

Katz nodded and tightened his grip on the boy. Courage kicked his legs a little, whining.

Le Quack leaned against the entrance to the alleyway and lit a cigarette. Their soon-to-be benefactor was consulting his cellular device and frowning nervously as he advanced towards the alleyway.

“Clifton,” murmured the Queen of the Black Puddle, summoning her prey. She’d draped herself on the wall of the alleyway and beckoned fetchingly. “Clifton…”

The man with the mobile looked up and stared at her, hypnotized. 

Katz eyed the street. No cops--not that he could see. 

“Come here, Clifton,” the Queen of the Black Puddle purred. The man with the mobile smiled vacantly and began to walk down the alleyway. Le Quack followed him in.

Katz hung back, waiting with Courage. He heard a sharp shout and a few heavy thuds before a wallet came bouncing out of the alleyway.

Katz put the dog down and picked up the wallet. Inside were several crisp dollar bills. He glanced at the denominations and felt his eyebrows rise. 

They’d certainly picked the right chap.

The others emerged from the alley with small smiles of self-satisfaction. 

Katz waved the wallet. “Four hundred,” he reported. Le Quack’s eyes widened and his bill curved in a sinister grin.

“To the bar, then,” Le Quack said. 

“To anywhere,” said the Cajun Fox, hurrying along from behind them and grabbing Katz and Le Quack as he went. “We’ve got company!”

“Release me, you unwashed--”

“Fight about it later, Red. Security called the cops. We need to go to earth and fast,” the Cajun Fox said, bouncing up to check behind him. “Come on, y’all, we gotta move!”

Big Toe and the Queen of the Black Puddle brought up the rear. “Take a left,” Big Toe said, and they slid down the next street.

“There!” the Queen of the Black Puddle said, pointing to a nearby bar with a glowing green sign reading ‘The Rock.’ Across the street was a bar called ‘The Hard Place’ and Katz distinctly saw a few muscle-bound young men in scraps of leather milling about outside. 

The Rock it was, then. 

They assumed a more natural stride and Katz passed the fox Courage’s leash. 

“Just try and act like he’s your seeing eye dog this time, will you?” Katz muttered, shaking off the Cajun Fox’s grip.

Unfortunately, he did it just in time for the bouncer to grab his shoulder.

Katz was on his best behavior. The bouncer was able to pull back his hand and not a bloody stump.

“Hey, pussy cat,” the bouncer grumbled. “Tell your buddy we don’t let no dogs in.”

“I beg your pardon?” Katz asked in the tone that typically made other people beg for considerably more than his pardon. “The dog is a service animal.”

“No dogs,” the bouncer repeated. “Either get him outta here or keep walkin’.”

Katz wanted to argue the point but he was painfully aware of the probability of police cars rounding the corner in the near future. He signalled to the others and they hurried down to another alley.

“What are we going to do with you, then?” Katz grumbled, looking down at the boy.

Courage whined. “Can’t we just go home?”

“Absolutely not.”

“No dogs, huh?” the Cajun Fox said, hands on his hips. “Well now. I might just have a solution that’ll help us get into the place across the street.” He walked over to one of the trashcans and pulled out a black plastic garbage bag. He tore off the excess plastic above the knot and held it in his hands, grinning.

Katz frowned, bewildered. Whatever the Cajun Fox had in mind, it wasn’t lost on the Queen of the Black Puddle, who took one look at the plastic and the dog and burst into gales of laughter. Le Quack covered his grinning bill with one feathery hand.

“What are you doing?” Courage whimpered. The Cajun Fox grabbed him and began wrapping his head in black plastic.

Katz grabbed Courage’s collar and yanked the dog out of the Cajun Fox’s grip. “You idiot! Are you trying to kill him?” Like hell was this mangy hick going to kill the dog! Katz would flay him alive!

“‘Course not, chili pepper. I’m trying to disguise him.” The Cajun Fox reached forward and twisted the plastic around the dog’s head. “There we go! Perfect.”

Katz looked at the trembling dog. “This is profoundly idiotic,” Katz declared. “The mask doesn’t even cover his eyes and snout. He’s clearly still a dog and a mask won’t hide that any more than it will hide the fact that I’m keeping him on a leash--”

Katz dropped the lead as horrified realization broke over the horizon of his mind. He stared at the dog. Some small part of him thought that the Cajun Fox had to be given some credit, after all. The mask was an exact replica of the masks of some of those musclebound and leather-strapped young men across the street.

“Oh, no,” he said. 

“What?” Courage asked, whimpering.

The Queen of the Black Puddle was laughing so hard she was slumped against the wall. Le Quack finally lost his composure and burst into loud laughter.

“You take him,” Katz said to the Cajun Fox.

“What is it?” the dog whined.

“Not me, Red!” the Cajun Fox said merrily. “They’ve already seen me with him! We’re going to have to go to the other bar, anyway.”

“Le Quack--” Katz said, trying to be reasonable.

“Non, non,” Le Quack laughed. “You two are much more suited to each other! I like to have my hands free.”

The Queen of the Black Puddle wiped her streaming eyes. “It’s a pretty accurate depiction of your relationship, I think,” she said, gasping for breath and giggling.

Katz ground his teeth together. It bloody well was not! “You take him! Surely you, as royalty, are more accustomed to having…” Katz waved a hand at the trembling dog, entirely at a loss for words.

“Slaves?” the Queen of the Black Puddle asked, reaching down to pat the dog’s masked head. “No, I can’t say I am. Come on, let’s get out of this alleyway.”

Defeated, Katz picked up the leash. Big Toe didn’t have hands, or he’d have foisted the dog off on him. 

This was not going to end well.

***

They got into the bar across the street without any problems. ‘The Hard Place’ either could not see through the dog’s transparently obvious disguise or they didn’t much care. Either way, Katz was busy pretending he wasn’t holding the other end of the boy’s leash as they ordered a round of drinks and settled in.

The Cajun Fox had gone up to the bar to place an elaborate order. Le Quack was busy chatting up the ladies and the Queen of the Black Puddle was dancing under the blinking strobes. Big Toe had disappeared into a back room with one hundred dollars’ worth of their newfound wealth and Katz could only hope that he was making good on his promise to turn it into six hundred. 

That left him and the boy. 

Young people in highly eccentric outfits were bouncing and gyrating all around and Katz knew with a horrible, bone-deep clarity that he was not nearly drunk enough to deal with anything that was happening.

Katz desperately wanted to take the mask off of Courage but he could not be certain that they wouldn’t be thrown out again just as quickly as they’d been admitted. The bouncer had winked at him and Katz’s skin was still crawling. If anyone so much as looked at the boy in this condition...

“Well, do you want something to drink?” Katz asked, fingers stretched out on the rim of his wine glass. 

Courage looked at him with big, watery eyes and whined. 

Katz sighed and looked up at the waitress who’d stopped by and was smirking at them. “He’ll have a Shirley Temple,” Katz said, “and I’ll have the rest of this bottle.”

“Big brother? Is that you?”

Katz’s blood froze in his veins. “Kitty?”

“Katz! It’s you! What are you doing here?”

On the one hand, he saw his beloved younger sister approaching, of whom he had not been able to learn a thing in the years since she’d run away from home.

On the other hand, he saw his beloved younger sister approaching, of whom he had not been able to learn a thing in the years since she’d run away from home. And this was the first impression she was going to have of him in nearly a decade.

Beside him, Courage went stock-still. 

Kitty approached the table with her arm wrapped loosely around a rabbit’s waist. Katz faintly remembered the rabbit from their youth--a friend of his sister? Was this the one Kitty had run away over?

“Kitty,” Katz said, frantically trying to think of an excuse. “What a surprise. It’s been so long. I did not expect to see you here--”

“Are we interrupting a…” Kitty’s mouth performed some complicated gymnastics, taking in the leash and the mask, and she ended up biting her lip and squeezing the rabbit a little. “Date?”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Katz said. 

“Hi, I’m Bunny!” the rabbit said to Courage. She peered at him curiously. “Have we met before?”

“Uh-huh!” Courage smiled, nodding. He pulled his mask off.

“Don’t--!” Katz said in the same instant as Kitty gasped, “Courage?!”

Katz looked at his sister and her friend. They were staring at him. “How do you know him?” he asked.

They stared at him some more.

Katz looked at the dog. He’d pulled the mask back on. Katz put his elbow on the table and rubbed firmly under one eye. “This really, really, truly is not what it looks like,” he insisted. 

Kitty and Bunny sat down at the table. Kitty looked at him with fire in her eyes. “Then I think you’d better explain what’s going on here,” Kitty said. “Because this is a good dog.”

“What?” Katz stated, deadpan. “Kitty. You loathe dogs.”

“Not this one,” Kitty replied. “If it weren’t for him, Bunny would still be with Mad Dog and we’d never be together!”

Kitty squeezed her partner tighter. Well, that explained that, Katz supposed, but what Courage’s involvement could possibly be he could not begin to imagine.

“It’s a complicated situation,” Katz admitted. “Bit of a ‘keep your enemies closer’ sort of thing. His owners are dead. I and a few of my…” How to describe them? “...colleagues are taking care of him.”

“Oh, no,” Bunny sighed, grabbing Courage and hugging him close. “Poor Courage,” she said, taking off the mask again to pet the dog. “You must be so lonely!

Courage nestled up in her embrace and laughed rather stupidly. 

“I assure you, if anything he’s being smothered,” Katz grumbled. 

Kitty opened her mouth but whatever she was about to say was lost as the Cajun Fox slid into the booth with them, holding a gargantuan blue concoction containing several slices of fruit and a small umbrella. 

“Hellooo, ladies,” the Cajun Fox purred. “I see sugar and spice, but where’s everything nice?”

Katz was going to remove his intestines with a fish fork.

“Hi,” said Bunny. Obviously the girl was rather friendly. Kitty, on the other hand, seemed to share some of Katz’s doubtlessly murderous expression. “I’m Bunny and this is Kitty!”

“Katz is my brother,” Kitty said. 

“We-hell, I guess we know where the looks in the family went,” the Cajun Fox grinned. “Can I buy you girls a drink?”

“No, thank you, we were just leaving,” Kitty said, standing up and pulling a giggling Bunny along with her. “Brother, we’ll come by the farm to visit you and Courage soon. Bye, Courage! Take care!” She treated the dog to one of her rare, wide smiles, the which had been known to melt even her brother’s heart, and they disappeared into the crowd.

Katz pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes tightly shut. He could sense the Cajun Fox’s grin.

“If you so much as look at me…” Katz warned darkly.

The Cajun Fox said nothing, sucking noisily on the straw dipped into his drink.

Katz had worked his way through three quarters of the wine bottle when Big Toe came skulking out of the back. At least, he skulked as much as a gigantic purple foot could. 

The dog had finally calmed down, due in no little part to the fact that Katz had been absent-mindedly massaging one of his ears for the past hour. Now, the guilty expression on Big Toe’s face seemed to start him up again. Courage sat upright and began to tremble a bit.

“Fellas,” Big Toe said in a conspiratory tone, “we’d better make tracks, see.” His lesser toes seemed nervous, their distracted ‘yeah’s uttered by heads that were turning to try and see around them.

“Oh God,” mumbled Katz. “Why, pray tell.” He looked around, trying to spot the Queen of the Black Puddle and Le Quack. They should have worked out a distress signal. 

“I, uh, might be real good at countin’ cards,” Big Toe admitted, “but not so great at, uh, bein’ subtle.”

“Fantastic,” Katz drawled. 

“How much did you make?” the Cajun Fox asked. His lips were blue.

“Seven,” Big Toe said. Katz’s eyebrows lifted. Not too bad.

“Hundred?” the Cajun Fox asked.

“Thousand,” grumbled Big Toe.

Katz sighed. Oh. Yes. That was certainly getting into leg-breaking territory and since Big Toe wasn’t really gifted in that area, it was their legs on the line. 

“Get out,” Katz suggested. “We’ll follow in a few moments.”

Big Toe nodded and hopped out. Katz picked up the bottle in one hand and grabbed Courage with the other, tucking him under one arm. 

“I’ll get Queenie,” the Cajun Fox volunteered. “You get the doc.”

Katz nodded and headed into the crowd, seeking a small white duck in the crush of bodies. He found the fowl near the stage, covered in red, pink, and purple lipstick marks and waving a pair of glowsticks around.

“Big Toe is going to get us killed,” Katz reported as the duck continued to shake his tail feather. “I suggest we move.”

“Fine,” Le Quack said, “I suppose zere must be other bars nearby. Do you know zat ze dog has lost his mask?”

“I’m aware,” Katz said darkly. “If you’d be so good--”

There was an enormous crash and the sound of wood cracking. Katz’s head jerked up in time to see the front of the club was kicked in by the massive presence of Big Toe. The foot hopped through the crowd, cutting a very quick swath through the dance floor.

“Through the back!” Big Toe cried. Katz looked in the direction from which Big Toe had come and saw that there were plenty of blue and red flashing lights out on the street. A few men in uniform were pushing into the club, looking around and fondling their nightsticks threateningly.

“Damn!” Katz hissed. Le Quack had already bolted after Big Toe and Katz could see the fox and the Queen making similar motions. Katz tightened his grip on the dog and chased after them.

***

They dodged, jigged, and squirmed out through the back of the club. Big Toe’s gangster poker buddies ran towards the rumble with the police and Katz felt as if he was trying to swim upstream getting around them.

Courage was shaking and whimpering and Katz was evaluating the relative merits of concussing the pathetic little thing with his wine bottle when they burst out into the alleyway behind the club. Katz picked a direction and ran, hopping nimbly over piles of trash and debris, darting across a bustling street a block away, and finally catching up to his compatriots in a discreet alcove a little further out.

Katz plopped Courage on the ground and drained the rest of his wine bottle. He was not nearly drunk enough for this.

“So what’s plan B?” asked the Queen of the Black Puddle.

“Well, we’ve got seven thousand three hundred dollars,” Katz said, tucking the bottle into a trash can. “I say we spend it.”

***

In the next bar, they did not find themselves making friends.

“What are you tryin’a say, pussy cat?” demanded the large man in the leather vest. “You wanna go?”

“With you? Not likely,” Katz replied. “Not much of a challenge, are you? I suggest you crawl back to whatever hole you dragged yourself out of--”

The first fist hit him in the face and Katz’s head wrenched to the side. He could taste blood. 

He unsheathed his claws and leapt for his assailant’s face, hissing loudly. 

The dog screamed.

Katz was a little preoccupied, rolling on the floor with a much-bigger opponent, but the blood in his mouth had revitalized his senses and he could tell that the rest of the bar had exploded. Nearby Le Quack was biting deep into the arm of one of the man’s friends and the Queen of the Black Puddle was cold-clocking another.

Now, this was something he’d actually missed from his childhood. 

Katz dipped beneath a grasping hand and took the opportunity to unclip the leash from around Courage’s neck. “Off you go, my dear,” he said, tossing the dog out of the way. 

“Got ‘im!” shouted Big Toe as Katz focused on digging his claws into the crotch of his opponent.

“All right,” he said softly, scratching hard as he stood upright. Katz snapped the leash like a bullwhip. 

It occurred to him that he wasn’t really doing himself any favors if he wanted to claim that he wasn’t suited to the kind of lifestyle that involved masks and leashes if he was going to find ways to improvise a whip.

That would have to be a consideration for another day, however. At the moment he was very, very busy.

“Who’s next?” he grinned. He grabbed the leash at the midlength and spun it like a helicopter blade, whirling the heavy metal clip around. He whipped it into the side of an approaching skinhead’s temple and watched the Cajun Fox grab a bottle and break it over the head of another man in biker leathers.

The Queen of the Black Puddle roared and Katz threw himself at another patron.

Yeah. This was a good idea.

***

After the fight, they decided to find a place with less broken glass lying on the ground. The Queen of the Black Puddle wanted to take the dog for a walk around the block, so they were making their own fun in their new drinking hole.

Katz’s expression twisted slightly as he downed the fifteenth shot of gin. 

“Rule Britannia,” he croaked, swallowing and placing the empty glass on the top of the small pyramid he’d constructed. He took a large gulp of a chaser and nodded his head to his audience.

Le Quack applauded politely and Big Toe grinned and hooted and began to collect from the bar patrons who’d bet against Katz.

The Cajun Fox grudgingly handed over a hundred dollar bill. 

Katz tucked it into his jacket pocket with a smile.

“I still think it’s got to be cheating,” the Cajun Fox said suspiciously.

“Envy is so unbecoming,” Katz murmured as he sipped lightly at his sixteenth shot of the hour. He was definitely going to throw up as soon as he got away from the fox, but it was enough rub his superiority in the hick’s face. He hadn’t drunk like that in years.

He still had it.

***

A little while later, Katz found himself walking into the police precinct.

“Good evening,” Katz said to the policeman. “I’m here to ask that the three drunks you have in the tank are released under my recognizance. A woman, a large foot, and a fox?”

The policeman gave him a penetrating look. “Have I seen you before?”

“I doubt it,” Katz said. “I’m Katz, a local businessman. If I could please take my companions home and get them sobered up?”

The policeman nodded gruffly, handed Katz a sheaf of release paperwork, and went to retrieve his wayward housemates.

Katz waited patiently in the lobby, carefully recording false information on the forms. Le Quack waited outside with the dog.

Soon, the Queen of the Black Puddle, Big Toe, and the Cajun Fox appeared. Katz nodded to the policeman and led them out of the building.

“I take my eyes off you for twenty seconds and you get caught,” Katz grumbled as they left. “You’re all just lucky the Queen ate the body before they saw it.”

***

“I tell ya,” the Cajun Fox said, “sometimes I think I oughta work in the restaurant business for real. This kitchen is nice.”

Katz took a sip of his wine. “I think they have regulations about hair nets,” he said. “And fleas.”

The Cajun Fox smacked him in the arm with a wooden spoon and it was testament to his good mood that Katz didn’t try and smack right back. “Make yourself useful and serve up.”

The Cajun Fox plated the entrees and Katz grabbed four plates, ferrying them over to the intimate window table the group had selected for themselves. 

It didn’t count as breaking and entering if one didn’t break anything. The legal system could have them up on entering charges, if such things existed, but somehow Katz doubted it would ever come to court.

He placed the steaks before his seated companions, taking his own plate from the approaching fox. They were sitting in the candlelit dimness of a closed and rather high-end restaurant. They’d never really stopped for dinner and it was pleasant to sit down to a meal now, even if it was the Cajun Fox’s cooking.

“Eat,” Katz instructed the tired dog. He patted Courage on the head as the dog picked at his meal.

“Shall I make a bit of coffee?” he asked the group at large once they’d finished their supper.

“I’d take some,” Le Quack said. “Zere is still much to do, after all.”

“Does anybody else hear sirens?” asked the Queen of the Black Puddle.

There was the sound of the back door of the restaurant crashing in. When the police approached the front of the building, they’d only find a broken front window, several shattered plates, and a recently-defenestrated table lying in the street outside.

So perhaps there was a case for breaking and entering. In any event, coffee was going to have to wait.

***

It wasn’t the first time he’d been thrown out of a bar.

It wasn’t going to be the last.

But they really shouldn’t have touched the dog. 

“I’m not saying we’re not negligent dog owners,” Katz said, as they ran from the sirens. “I own that. Negligence is our stock-in-trade. But I’m not that negligent. No one touches the dog.” Courage was shaking violently in his arms.

“Say zat to ze prosecutor,” Le Quack growled.

“Yeah, good fuckin’ job, Red,” the Cajun Fox groused. “You could’a just beat ‘im up. Didn’t have to break his neck.”

“He had it coming,” Katz grumbled. “Dog-nappers? I mean, really. How low can one go?”

“Remind me again who’s on whose leash?” the Queen of the Black Puddle grumbled to Big Toe as they flagged down a pair of taxis. 

Time to leave this neighborhood.

***

Katz leaned against the bar with his arms crossed and watched the show playing out above them, Courage’s leash looped around one wrist. The dog was drinking a Shirley Temple.

“Well, well,” Katz said quietly.

“I mean, say what you will about him, he’s pretty good,” the Cajun Fox said, his eyes trained on the same point as Katz’s.

“I hate to agree, but...yes,” Katz murmured. “Where do you suppose he learned it?”

“Monkey see, monkey do?”

“I suppose you’re right.” Katz tilted his head. “I never thought that go-go dancing would be one of his skills. You’d think he’d have a natural aversion to cages.”

“Must be a French thing.”

“Mm.” Katz’s right ear perked up. “Do you hear sirens?”

“Shit--!”

***

They were in another club. The Cajun Fox was trying to teach the boy to dance and Katz, freed from his babysitting duty, was playing a somewhat weary wallflower. 

“Where did you get that riding crop?” the Queen of the Black Puddle shouted. She was wriggling sinuously against a man who looked like he was about to be her breakfast.

Katz looked down at it. “I really don’t know.” He thought for a moment or two and sighed despondently, striking the leather loop against the palm of his hand.

“And unfortunately,” Katz said, in the voice of a person making an uncomfortable realization about themselves, “I think I rather like it.” 

***

“Get up here, Red Vine!” the Cajun Fox said, reaching down for Katz.

The idiot was on a tabletop, shaking his tail from side to side. Courage and Katz were sitting at the table in question and Katz would not participate.

Katz did not dance.

“I haven’t got a dollar for you, I’m afraid,” he grumbled, batting away the hick’s hand. The Cajun Fox grabbed his wrist and hauled with surprising strength. Katz found himself halfway up onto the table without any input from his own muscles.

A resounding hoot echoed through the bar as he unsteadily got to his feet on the table. From his new vantage point, he could see the Queen of the Black Puddle doing a keg stand and Le Quack dancing 

“Come on, chili pepper! Give ‘em what they want!” the Cajun Fox shouted, slapping him on the ass. Katz startled, claws reflexively extending, before narrowing his eyes at the hayseed.

Did this unwashed yokel think he could embarrass him?

Please.

Katz did not dance, but that certainly did not mean he couldn’t. 

***

“No. Absolutely not,” Katz said. 

“I took my stuff off!” the Cajun Fox shouted. 

“You only wear sunglasses,” Katz pointed out. “I am not participating in this.” 

“Get in here!” bellowed Big Toe.

“And you don’t even wear clothes,” Katz said. Courage hid behind him, paws braced on his legs. “I can’t claim this has been a night in which dignity has played a great role, but you must hold yourself to some standards.”

“Coward,” Le Quack accused. 

Katz sighed heavily. He folded one arm across his chest and held his head in a hand, despairing. “I am not about to go skinny-dipping in a public pool--”

He’d always known that his Achilles heel was his sense of drama but he could never quite help himself. It was utterly his undoing. If he hadn’t been preoccupied with despairing of his companions, he would have sensed the Queen of the Black Puddle behind him. 

He felt her collide with his back and shove him into the pool, clothing and all.

He yowled as he broke the surface of the water. Damn it! He loathed being wet! He tore a streak through the water towards the cement ridge of the swimming hole and hauled himself out, hackles up and eyes wild.

The others roared with laughter at his condition. Even the dog, who’d ended up in the water with him, giggled as he dog-paddled around.

They didn’t know what hell they’d unleashed upon themselves.

But later. 

No sense in ruining tonight. Revenge could wait.

***

Dawn was coming up over the city of Somewhere and they were riding on the train back to the truck.

They were literally riding on top of the train. Being enclosed in a car was a little too dangerous at the moment. Katz did not expect that they would be able to get away with being released again.

Courage was asleep in his lap, despite the rushing wind and the physical danger that came with riding on the roof of a train. The poor creature was exhausted. Katz spared a hand from the death grip he maintained on the car long enough to pet the dog’s head.

They hopped off the roof of the train at their stop, sliding down the hill to the parking lot and bypassing the subway entrance entirely. Katz carried the exhausted dog in his arms as the others trudged to the truck.

Big Toe hopped into the truck bed and the Queen of the Black Puddle slid into her bottle. The Cajun Fox clambered into the back with Big Toe and threw himself flat on his back, already snoring. Le Quack tucked himself into the passengers’ seat, put the Queen in the cupholder, and began to doze.

Katz started up the truck and put on a classical music station. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the highway home. 

The dog nuzzled him in his sleep.

He smiled to himself and drove home. He thought he might just be happy to see the farm again.


	4. Brother of the Bride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kitty and Bunny are getting married, at last.  It's reason for much rejoicing, but not everyone is as happy as they ought to be.  
> 
> Courage does not think Katz is a very good brother.  

In time, Kitty and Bunny put in an appearance at the farmhouse.

Courage had been dozing on Katz’s lap when the doorbell rang. Courage bolted upright with a whine but Katz only stretched, lifting an eyebrow as he glanced over the side of the chair.

“Ah,” Katz said. He pushed Courage onto the floor and stood, folding the newspaper. “Do come in. The door’s unlocked.”

“Courage!” Bunny cried happily, pushing open the door. Courage smiled nervously and began to laugh as she picked him up and squeezed him tight.

“Hello, Courage!” Kitty purred, petting Courage’s head. “It’s so good to see you.”

Katz stood apart from his sister, one hand resting on the back of the chair. “Kitty. It’s been a long time.”

“Hello, brother. This is Bunny."  Kitty smiled at her partner.  "Of course, you met at the, ah, Hard Place, but I think it’s only right to have a proper introduction."

“Indeed,” Katz murmured. “How do you do?”

Bunny grinned and stuck out her hand. Katz took it hesitantly. “I’m fine! It’s so good to meet you! Kitty has told me so much about you!”

“All good things, I hope,” Katz said, in a tone of voice that made it clear he didn’t expect anything of the kind. “Can I offer you ladies a cup of tea?”

“Or a little lunch?” asked a voice from the kitchen. Courage turned to see the Cajun Fox sticking his head around the corner. He was wearing a huge, toothy grin and bobbled his eyebrows at their guests. “Look at you two, pretty as a picture! I could just eat y’all up.”

Katz bristled. “How dare you, you--”

The fox began ringing the bell with all his might. “COME AND GET IT,” he bellowed.

Katz’s ears flattened against his head as the fox disappeared back into the kitchen.

“Oh,” Kitty said. “So. You live with him.”

“One of your friends?” Bunny asked sweetly.

“One of his colleagues,” Kitty answered for him, arching an eyebrow at her brother.

Katz pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a very complicated situation,” he insisted.

“Well, I just can’t wait to meet the rest of them,” Kitty smirked. “We’d love some lunch! Come on, Courage.”

Everyone had gathered around the table and perked up at the sight of their guests.  Le Quack seemed to be thinking along the same lines as the Cajun Fox, but much to his misfortune a tureen of soup was accidentally upended on him while he was making a play. The Queen of the Black Puddle was much too busy making eyes at her boyfriend to do more than murmur a "hello."  Big Toe declared them to be “nice molls” and demonstrated no further interest in them.

Courage sat between Kitty and Bunny at their behest. They pampered him endlessly, feeding him as if he were a puppy and coddling him with petting and cooing and cuddling.

Katz sat at the table, drinking his tea and glowering at them.

Although it was unusual for them to entertain guests, Courage, Katz, Bunny, and Kitty were the only ones to linger around the table, once the Queen of the Black Puddle finished doing the dishes. Courage had tried to go help, only to be caught in Bunny’s arms and pulled back into her lap.

“What have you been doing with yourselves?” Katz asked, his tail twitching from side to side. Courage kept a wary eye on him. He didn’t seem annoyed by his sister’s visit, but he didn’t seem as happy to see her as he should be, if they really loved each other very much.

“We keep busy,” Kitty shrugged. “We like to travel together, explore the world. Spend time together.”

Bunny gave Kitty a radiant smile and Courage felt his own lips twitching up. He glanced at Katz and found the cat’s disdainful gaze focused on the girls' joined hands. Bunny was slowly tracing one of Kitty’s fingers with her own. Courage thought it was kind of sweet, and definitely not deserving of Katz’s contemptuous expression.

“We live together in a nice apartment in Somewhere,” Bunny said. “You all should come visit sometime soon.”

“Right,” Kitty said with a skeptical smile. She took Bunny’s hand and rubbed her thumb gently in the cup of her palm.

“And of course we’re going to be getting married soon,” the rabbit chirped.

Katz dropped his tea cup. It shattered on the floor in a pool of scalding brown water.

Courage jumped and whimpered, worried. Katz’s eyes were very wide and he stared at his sister for several heartbeats.

“Really,” he said at last.

“Yes, really,” Kitty said. She sounded defensive and tightened her grip on Bunny’s hand. Her ears were leaning back, not flat yet, but ready.

“Congratulations,” Katz said, flicking his eyes from Kitty to Bunny and back to his sister. His expression changed slightly, a look on his face that Courage couldn’t read.

“Thank you,” Kitty said. Kitty tilted her head to respond to her brother’s expression, craning her neck slightly forward. Bunny rubbed Courage’s head.

“In fact, this is our invitation to you all,” Bunny said. She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope with Katz’s name written on it in a sloping script. She pushed it across the table to him. He did not pick it up.

“The ceremony will be next weekend,” Kitty said, staring her brother down.

“That’s very soon,” Katz said. “I’m so glad you are eager to begin your lives together.” Katz deliberately widened his eyes at his sister.

Kitty narrowed her eyes in response and gave the merest shake of her head. “We’ve waited long enough.”

Katz lifted his eyebrows and opened his hands a fraction, looking between them again. He clasped his hands together. “Indeed you have. I’m sure I should be delighted to attend, thank you.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” declared Bunny. “And so will everyone else, surely?”

Katz stared at her for a moment, as if he’d forgotten her in his silent conversation with his sister. “I cannot possibly advise it,” he said in a low tone.

“Oh?” asked Kitty.

“As you can see, they are...eccentric.”

“I find them charming,” Kitty said, baring her teeth. Courage quivered in Bunny’s lap.

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” Katz replied. “But I would strongly suggest--”

“We would be so happy to have your new family attend our wedding, brother,” Kitty said archly.

Bunny nodded. “Oh, yes! You all seem so happy and so close here, and since we’ll all be family soon, it wouldn’t be right to leave them out!”

Katz gave up the pretense of having a real conversation in favor of staring at his sister with his eyes wide open for a few long seconds.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been terribly rude, but I’m afraid I’m just not following this,” Katz said at last, looking at Bunny. “Do you think that we are a family?”

“That’s what Kitty told me,” Bunny said sweetly. “That you’re all taking care of Courage together.”

Katz stared at Courage for a moment or two. “You were misinformed,” Katz said. “We are not a family. We are hardly a household.”

“How long have you been living here?” Kitty asked. She was drumming her fingers on the table and glaring at her brother.

“A mere--” Katz cut himself off, looking startled and perhaps a little horrified. Courage did some calculating of his own. “Ah. Nine months.”

“Long enough to be more than colleagues, brother,” Kitty smirked. “They’re invited. I’ll tell them myself. And Courage…”

She looked down at him and smiled sweetly, petting his head. “Will you be the ring-bearer?”

Katz covered his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes firmly. He rose to his feet and picked up the invitation.

“I’m going to go have a cigarette, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, and let himself out the back door.

Bunny and Kitty sat silently at the table for a few seconds more.

“I think that went well,” Kitty chirped, acidically sweet.

“Not exactly the most subtle guy, is he?” Bunny drawled, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “I’m sure he means well, but there’s only so much face-pulling I can ignore.”

“Sorry. He’s...well…”

“Oh, no, I understand,” Bunny said, taking her partner’s hand and kissing her cheek. “It’s fine.” They nuzzled each other for a few seconds before looking down at Courage.

“We really mean it,” Kitty said. “We’d be very happy if you carried the ring for us.”

Courage shifted worriedly but smiled and nodded. He got kissed on his head for his trouble.

Bunny and Kitty stayed for dinner. In all the nine months they’ve been living together, Katz still hadn’t eaten with the rest of them, so he just drank his tea silently and let Kitty make the announcement.

Big Toe was the first to perk up. “What’s the bar situation?” asked the smallest head.

“Open bar,” Kitty smiled.  

“I’m going to need a new dress,” the Queen of the Black Puddle said. “And of course we can all bring our plus-ones?”

“Of course,” Bunny replied.

Le Quack grinned. “And will zere be bridesmaids?” he purred.

“Ah, no,” Kitty said. “Just me and Bunny and Courage in the bridal party. Sorry to disappoint.”

“But zere will be other guests?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

The Cajun Fox and Le Quack exchanged leering smiles. Courage caught Katz rolling his eyes.

As the ladies were preparing to head back to Somewhere, Katz pulled his sister aside for a few minutes. After a short conversation around the side of the house, they reappeared on the porch, where Bunny and Courage were waiting for them.

Bunny wrapped Katz in a hug and squeezed him, despite his rigid posture and horrified expression. Kitty kissed Courage on the head.

Then the siblings stood together, for the first time in God only knew how long. Katz’s arm twitched as if he was about to reach out and touch her, but it never moved past an aborted reflex. Kitty coughed and shifted her weight uncertainly.

“Well,” Katz said.

“Oh, yes,” Kitty replied.

“Mm,” Katz added.

They each took a step back, exiting one another’s space. They nodded at each other, turned around, and parted company without another word or a backwards glance.

Courage frowned at Katz’s retreating back. It was such a shame that he and Kitty didn’t care more about each other. They didn’t exactly have many people who loved them, after all. 

Oh well. You couldn’t understand these things about cats. They weren’t like other people.

***

Getting suits was an...experience.

Le Quack cleaned up well, of course, but Courage, the Cajun Fox, the Hunchback, Theodore, and Big Toe had a much harder time.

Theodore and the Huncback were strangely shaped, but they were docile and sweet and even though they didn’t look good, exactly, they looked clean and tidy and were clearly making an effort. Big Toe presented an enormous challenge, but they managed to make it work with five collars and bow ties, a gigantic spat, and a striking red cummerbund wrapped around their ankle.

After just a few minutes of exchanging blows, the Cajun Fox and Katz reached an agreement: the Cajun Fox could wear his sunglasses as long as he left his cleaver at home.

That left Courage.  He wasn’t in the habit of wearing costumes, but when he did, it was almost always something eggplant-related. He knew that wouldn’t work this time.

“The essential problem is that you’re shaped like a kidney bean,” Katz grumbled, “and any attempt to distract from that all-important fact is only going to emphasize it.”

Courage whimpered. It wasn’t his fault that heaven had bestowed upon him a beanly physique. He thought he wore it pretty well.

It was hard to make that kind of argument, however, when a judgmental fashionista was looking at him in cool despair. Katz wasn’t renting. Courage had yet to see Katz's wedding ensemble but he knew that Katz was never more at home than he was in a suit jacket and tie. Katz favored very close cuts, pieces that were carefully tailored to his body, and they always looked infinitely better than suits the others were renting now.

“Black child’s tuxedo, I think,” Katz said to the suit shop clerk. “Roughly size 4, cut modern if you have it, tight classic if you don't.  White cummerbund and a French Rose bow tie. Mark that, French Rose.  If you only have peach, tell me now because the color must be absolutely precise.  Good.  Peaked jacket and woe betide you if you presume to sell us a coat with shiny lapels. No cuff links, I'll handle those.  That and the rest of this...lot will do," Katz finished, waving a hand at his suited companions.

“French Rose?” the Cajun Fox drawled. “Sassy for spring, chili pepper?”

“We are coordinating with one of the brides,” Katz replied coldly. “Take off that kit and wrap it up. All this polyester is making my skin crawl.”

***

They got a call three days before the wedding.

Katz answered it. “Bagge residence. Ah, yes. Indeed? I cannot say I am surprised.”

Courage picked his head up. He’d been sleeping on the sofa.

“No. I say that because I’ve had dealings with them before and I wasn’t impressed. What is your new plan?” he asked. Katz listened for a few moments.

“I’m afraid it’s not my choice to make,” Katz said. He frowned.

“No, I am not. There are legal reasons. I cannot claim ownership. You must understand why I cannot give you an answer, myself.”

More listening.

“Yes. Well, if you’ll allow me to ask him? Thank you so much,” he drawled. Katz covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with his hand and passed it to Courage. “My sister would like to speak to you.”

Courage took the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Courage?” Kitty’s voice sighed. “One of our venues fell through on us at the last second. Could you possibly help us? It’s going to be a small party...we just need a place for the reception. It would only be a few hours, and we’ll pay, of course…”

“Oh,” Courage said. “Um. Yeah! That’s fine.” He wasn’t happy about the idea of having a whole party here, but poor Kitty and Bunny must be at the end of their ropes if they couldn’t find a better substitute.

Kitty heaved a huge sigh. “Oh, my God. Thank you. Thank you so much,” she said. “We were getting scared. We’ll send the caterers and everything to the house on the day of the wedding. Thank you so much--I’ve got to go. Take care!”

Kitty hung up and Courage put the receiver back in its holster.

“Well,” Katz murmured, picking up the newspaper, “that’ll be interesting.”

Courage cut him a look. He really was cold, to treat his sister like that so close to her wedding. What could one possibly object to about either Kitty or Bunny? They were wonderful girls.

Katz was just monstrous sometimes.

***

The wedding was going to take place in one hour.

Courage was in his tuxedo and holding the pillow with the rings sitting in it. The church was full of Bunny and Kitty’s friends and his own little household.

Le Quack was chatting up a pair of beautiful minks and Courage was irresistibly reminded of La Flic. The Cajun Fox and Big Toe were laughing with Dr. Vindaloo a few people Courage didn't recognize, and the Queen of the Black Puddle and the Hunchback were taking a selfie together.

Theodore walked proudly through the door of the church with his mother on his arm, and the little old woman beamed at her handsomely-dressed son. They sat next to Shirley and the Weremole.

Charlie the Rat, Bunny’s best man, was talking to the justice of the peace.  He looked over and gave Courage a thumbs-up. Courage mirrored the gesture with a smile before trotting over to Kitty’s dressing room.  It was almost time to get started.

The door was cracked a bit and Courage leaned in to knock.

“Shut up, Katz,” Kitty’s voice grumbled. Courage pulled himself up short. Maybe he didn’t want to interrupt this.

“No, you’re right,” Katz said softly. “That was unworthy.”

Kitty sighed. “There really isn’t still time, actually. There hasn’t been time for me in years. Not since I first met her, really.”

“I simply...I simply do not understand, Kitty,” Katz said. “What service has she done you, that you feel like this?”

Kitty scoffed. “Service? Katz. It was never about that. Love isn’t about service.”

“Perhaps that wasn’t the way to put it, but do you understand what I mean? She’s a sweet girl, I suppose, but I don’t see in her what you must see. Certainly not anything I would ever legally bind myself to.”

“I know. I don’t think anyone could see her the way I do. But it’s not something that you can tally up, you know. We don’t trade gestures like that. I just love her. I always have. It’s not her habits or her personality or her looks or anything...just...her. And I just do.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Does she love you? Do you know it for certain?”

Kitty went very quiet. “She says she loves me,” she admitted. Courage swallowed. She didn’t sound too sure. “She acts like it. And you know what? That’s enough. I believe her, but even if I didn’t, if she wants to marry me, I want to marry her. I trust her and I don’t need concrete proof of her feelings, even if she could give me some. I love her enough for both of us, if it came to it. I just want to live with her, forever.”

Katz was silent for a long moment.

“I’m trying to like her,” he said.

“I know.”

“It’s a challenge. I’ve hated her for so long.”

“I know,” Kitty sighed. “I wish you didn’t. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I made that choice by myself.”

“I know that. But if it weren’t for her, maybe…” Katz trailed off. “Well, we can’t possibly know that.  Never mind.”

“That’s right.”

They were quiet for a while.

“Are you ready?” Katz asked.

“I think so.”

“The dress is very nice.”

“Oh, thanks.”

Courage knocked on the door.

“Come in!” Kitty chirped. She turned on the vanity seat to look at the door and smiled when Courage stepped in. She was wearing a beautiful, full pink gown with a large bow on the back, the halter neckline wrapped around her slender throat. A headdress of roses sat between her ears, fastened to a sheer pink veil.

Beside her, her brother stood leaning against the wall, one hand in his pocket. His white tuxedo jacket revealed a French Rose waistcoat and tie underneath, fitted close on him and looking terribly dapper.  Katz looked smooth and suave and icy but his eyes kept darting to Kitty.

It was a real effort not to glare at him. How could Kitty stand him, when he was trying to get her to break up with Bunny on their very wedding day?

“Oh, Courage! There you are,” Kitty said happily. “Is it almost time?”

“Uh-huh!” Courage replied, nodding.

Katz stood upright and offered his elbow to his sister. For the first time that Courage saw, the siblings touched, Kitty tucking her hand into his arm and used it to pull herself up.

“Give us a moment alone, won’t you, dear boy?” Katz asked Courage. Courage wanted to refuse--Katz shouldn’t have any more opportunities to bully his sister today--but Kitty smiled.

“Yes, if you could let the justice of the peace know we’re ready to go?” Kitty asked and Courage had to bow out.

He left slowly, wanting to make sure Katz didn’t say anything mean. He could only barely catch the low murmur of Katz's voice, but after a few seconds, he heard Kitty’s bright laughter ringing out.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “Katz, you sap! Did you write that one down?”

Courage made a confused noise and shrugged, hurrying off to find the officiant.

He was never going to understand cats.

***

Kitty walked down the aisle with her brother on her arm, beaming. Bunny was already crying with joy and Charlie was pressing tissue after tissue into her hands. Katz was stiff and impassive, his jaw clenched tight as he walked with his sister.

Courage quivered; dreading what, he had no idea.

Katz reached out for Bunny’s hand and took it in his own. He placed his sister’s hand in her palm with a very significant look at Bunny, before releasing them both and taking his seat.

The service went beautifully. Katz’s threatening examination of the assembled audience ensured that no one made a peep when the justice asked if anyone objected to the union.  The women exchanged vows and the church burst into raucous applause when they kissed for the first time as a married couple.  A weeping Charlie passed Courage a tissue and Courage dabbed at his eyes.

Kitty and Bunny hurried out of the hall with the bridal party in pursuit.  Katz strolled down the aisle with his hands in his pockets.

“Well, that could have been much more of a disaster,” he murmured to Courage.

Courage waited until Katz looked towards the couple before he rolled his eyes.

***

The party rocked the farmhouse.

The Cajun Fox couldn't help himself and started cooking up a feast alongside what the caterers had provided, presenting a goopy, chocolaty monstrosity alongside the traditional wedding cake.  (Everyone agreed that it was the superior dessert, but only outside the hearing of the caterers.)

Kitty and Bunny had changed into a pair of party dresses, eager to get out of their elaborate gowns. The first dance was a beautiful waltz, the girls whispering and giggling to each other and trading chaste kisses as they swayed in each other's arms.

Once the formality of the first dance was over, however, Charlie bumped DJ Lung out of the booth and started blasting dance music.

Le Quack had written up a dance card and traded adoring partners with an enviable regularity, spinning girl after girl around the floor. Dr. Vindaloo and Shirley were formidable disco dancers and Big Toe demonstrated a step-dancing technique that made the floorboards bounce.  The Queen of the Black Puddle had caught Bunny's bouquet and she and the Hunchback were dancing together.

Katz had made a valiant attempt to drink wine and melt into the woodwork, but when Kitty grabbed Courage for a dance, Bunny forcibly dragged her new brother-in-law onto the dancefloor. The rabbit seized one of his hands and held it on her waist while the other was clutched in a steely fist. They shifted back and forth, Katz trying to touch as little of her as possible.

"She'll wear him down," Kitty murmured to Courage.  "She's irresistible."

Charlie changed to the next song and Katz managed to disentangle himself in time for the Cajun Fox to take his place.  Before Katz could escape to his seat, however, Kitty grabbed him and held him fast.

Katz was much more relaxed with her, relatively speaking. They were both stiff and a little awkward, but more graceful together, approximating a waltz in the middle of a wild tangle of flailing bodies. They leaned close to each other, having some kind of quiet conversation.  Kitty smiled a few times, often shaking her head.  Courage tried to stay nearby, but the minks from the church each decided that he was adorable and simply had to dance with them. By the time Courage got free, Katz was back against the wall and Kitty had moved on.

It was gone midnight by the time the guests began leaving. Courage finally saw a drunk Dr. Vindaloo into a taxi and trudged back into the house, exhausted but happy.

“Wow!” Bunny sighed. “What a party!”

“Mm-hm,” Kitty murmured tiredly, half-collapsed on the sofa. “I don’t know if I have enough energy to drive home.”

“Stay here!” Courage offered. They didn’t have much room, sure, but they could take his and Katz’s bed for the night. Big Toe slept in the living room but Katz and Courage could take the sofa.

Katz, leaning against the doorjamb to the kitchen, lifted an eyebrow at him. “Yes, do,” Katz said to his sister. “I’m sure we can find a bed for you.”

“Oh, really?” Bunny asked, clasping her hands together.

“Indeed.”

“That would be wonderful!” Bunny grinned at them. “Courage, maybe you could show me the bedroom? I just want to tumble into bed, I’m so tired.  Are you coming, Kitty?"

Kitty smirked at her from her seat.  "I'll be right up."

Bunny blew her new wife a kiss and giggled as she followed Courage up the stairs.

“Oh, Courage, thank you so much for everything,” Bunny said, hugging herself. “It’s all been so magical.”

Courage smiled and led her into the bedroom.  Bunny threw herself on the bed, stretching her arms over her head.  

"Oh!  I'm so tired.  And I'm so happy!"  She reached up for Courage and pulled him onto the mattress with her, petting him.  "I don't think anyone has ever been this happy before.  I think I'll pop!"  She stroked his ears, sighing blissfully.  "I love her so much.  She's wonderful and today was so perfect.  Only...oh, it doesn't matter."

Courage made a soft, curious noise.  

"Well, her brother, you know?  I just wish he was a little more..."  Bunny hummed softly.  "I don't know.  Maybe more like her.  Nicer, maybe.  I don't know if he loves her as much as he should."

Courage whined softly in agreement. 

"Kitty loves him so much, but he's just so cold," Bunny said.  "I've never met anyone so icy.  I just don't understand it..."

The bedroom door swung open and Kitty appeared in the doorway.  "Well, well, what's this?" she smiled.  

"We were just waiting for you!" Bunny grinned.  

"Mm-hm?" Kitty asked.  "Well, thank you, Courage, for everything...I think we'll head straight to bed, Bunny and I..."

Courage hopped off of the bed.  "Good night!" he said, hot-footing it to the door amid Bunny's flirtatious giggling.

Oh, well, Courage thought, as he curled up on the living room sofa and settled down to sleep with a smile on his face. Even if Katz didn't love his sister as much as she deserved, Kitty definitely had someone who did.

***

There is a box in the basement.

It is tucked away in a corner and the spiders have made webs over it. No one knows that it is there. No one looks down there and no one would dare to touch it if they did.

Katz has always had it with him.

Every now and then he goes down into the basement for something more than just a visit with his pets. He carefully plucks up the webs and drags the box out, letting his spiders clamber over him and the contents of the box.

It is 3AM and he has come down to visit it now.  It seems appropriate that on so momentous a day he should make such a profound addition to his collection.

One item in the box is a scrap of paper. It had been left on a kitchen table so many years ago and he’d mindlessly pocketed it on his way out the door. _Come down to the hospital when you get this. They found her._

He remembered his reply, given in person. “I’ll make the arrangements.” The arrangements had been a lonely mass service, tucked into a church schedule where it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone, and a pauper’s grave for the scraps they could find. The dogs hadn’t left them much to bury.

Another note is part of a letter. _I miss you but I’ve been working hard and spending time with Bunny. That won’t surprise you, of course. You always knew, even if I didn’t see it yet. You told me I was fawning and it’s true. I don’t think it’s requited but I think I can live with that. I’m trying to, at least. She’s the only sunshine I’ve got left, really. I don't intend to disrespect to you, of course, but I think you’d be mortally offended if I said you were in any way sunshiney. Speaking of which, I hear you bought a motel. Why? You never seemed like the most hospitable guy._

He didn’t have his response. He wonders if she still has it. They’ve sent each other enough letters over the years that she would have a mighty collection, by now. He only barely remembers how he replied to these notes.

Another letter. _We make each other so happy, just by being together. That’s all that matters. Isn’t it? As long as we can care for each other, we’ll be fine. I don’t mind that she doesn’t love me, really, I don’t. It makes things easier, in a way. I hope the motel’s going well. I should come visit soon. Maybe she’ll come along, as a vacation._

Another. _I don’t know. It just happens. Her heart sends out a radar and it loves everything it sees, but I’m a blank spot on the screen, invisible. She loves him, is in love with him, and she never seems to mind that he’s so cruel. I’m trying to talk to her but I don’t know how, when it would be a lie to say I’m only doing it for her good. I am selfish, you know that. We both are, you and I. I want to take her with me but if I do I don’t know that I’ll ever let her go, and then I’m no better than he is._

And another. _She swore she knew what she was doing and that she’d always be my friend. When she left, I broke a few wine glasses in the sink and cried._

The next is a scrap in the same handwriting. _He took her. He’s hurting her. Why is it always a dog?_

He doesn’t remember how he responded to that. Maybe nothing. He didn’t know the answer. It had been always a dog, except when it had just been God--and that was no surprise, when their very names warned the world that they were in cahoots.

Another scrap, the script shaky. He’d found it on the kitchen table, half-tucked into an envelope she’s never sent. _I went to see her. She’d been beaten up, cut, hurt. I tried to make her come with me. She said she loves him. He found us. He hurt me._

Another scrap, the handwriting crisp and sure and businesslike. He’d found this one on her bedside table. _No funeral. I mean it, Katz. You know Mom would have been humiliated by hers. Don’t let me be embarrassed like that._

He has a few hospital records and bills. From here, he can’t see the frantic struggle to empty her stomach, the arguments with the staff to keep her out of the psych ward, the exhausting irrelevance of inquiries about payment while her heart tapped out a reedy tattoo. From here, he can’t hear her crying and raging when she awoke to find herself still alive or the way her voice had cracked when she said she hated him for keeping her here.

From here, he can only remember the hard, cold apathy that engulfed him even as he held her limp hand. She could have gone or stayed and he would have felt the same deep emptiness, because his sister had died. Kitty, his sister, his mother’s daughter, would not have swallowed those pills. All unknowing, the rabbit had changed Kitty, broken her into pieces. The best parts of his sister had been stolen away by someone who neither knew nor cared what she had taken from them, from him. 

Katz could not have hated her more if she'd tried to kill Kitty with her own hands.

There is a release form in the box and a few crumpled and smoothed-out referrals to psychologists.  They were never used.  There's a scrawl in Kitty's handwriting on the corner of one that says,  _I can't afford any of them and I know you can't, either.  Let it go.  I'll be fine._

There are about five overdue payment notices from the hospital. They’ve gone yellow with age. He wonders where the hospital has been sending the new ones.

There’s a note, posted to him at the Katz Motel. _I’m leaving. Don’t follow me._

Later still, he’d received a letter from across the country. _I’m alive and I’m traveling. I wear a mask and no one knows who I am. Sometimes I just walk all day and never see anyone. If I can’t die, I’ll just be nothing and no one. A dog tried to attack me yesterday and I put him down. I’ve got one of his teeth in my pocket._

He remembers that he'd sneered when he'd received that letter. When he was younger he'd hated the way she responded to every tragedy, because it was always about melodrama and self-exposure. She made real pain into some kind of theatrical extravaganza, wailing and gnashing her teeth and he hated what he perceived as self-absorbed artificiality.

He wonders if she still has his response to that first travel letter. It was scathing, he remembers that. He remembers how furious he was and later, how thrilled, because fury was the first thing to break through his shell of apathy in months. He remembers slicing her apart, raging at her stupidity and selfishness, telling her that he was ashamed of her and her ridiculous behavior.

Her reply had been short. _I don’t care._

He has thought about it more since those days. He has decided that maybe her behavior was never as much a production or a ploy for sympathy as much as it was an explosion, unbridled and expanding like a supernova from inside her broken heart, that she was as helpless in the face of it as anyone.

Maybe.

He is, of course, her opposite. Tragedy could become comedy if one was far enough away from it, and though he doesn’t usually like to laugh, it was better than crying. The most preferable path was not to feel anything.

He’d thought for a long time that he had been successful at locking himself down, until he'd realized that his morbid fascination with feeding helpless people to giant spiders, forcing them to fight to the death for his entertainment, and/or sinking a submarine full of innocent bystanders to advance his business interests might just be signs of a maladjusted mind. He had been lashing out, punishing the world for being as it was. He hadn't been apathetic at all. He had been wounded and he had been handling the pain like a stupid kitten.  Even now, the humiliation of that epiphany stings him and he flushes with shame.

(That candy thing was just so incredibly petty. He sees that now.)

More letters, just notes. _Sometimes I wonder if she’s still alive or if he’s killed her yet. I used to fear that but I guess true love is less eternal than I thought, because now I don’t care._  And then there was a postscript written on a scrap, hastily tucked into the envelope before it was posted. The handwriting was shaky and the ink had run and dried in the pattern of her tears: _No, I was wrong. I’m so afraid. Please, God, let her be all right. It is eternal. It just comes and goes in waves, and now I’m drowning in it again._

He remembers his response to that one. All the anger had bled out of him and he’d proved her right. He’d written five words for her, riding a swell of the returning, eternal sea. _I know. I'm so sorry._

He wonders if she has a box like his. She would keep somewhere in the living room she shared with Bunny, right out in the middle of the house, because it would never occur to her that by placing the box in sight of all and sundry, she might be flaunting her brother’s private thoughts. The box would be full of letters, with things like _If you ever come back you will always have a room here._ and _I have enclosed a little_ _money and don't you dare send it back to me._ and _I made a bit of profit this month and I've been thinking of having her reinterred somewhere nicer, what do you think?_ and _No, there’s still no one, but I don’t want anyone, either._ and _Of course I’m not lonely, I’m not even looking._

Oh, but he’s been a liar from the cradle, because here are the old hotel room keycards, ones he’d forgotten to return to the front desk. He remembers the hotels, the rooms, the beds. There are polaroids, most of them stained and faded, the features of the subjects mercifully blurred. More letters. A little more than a dozen. They echo each other but each has its own distinctive twist. _I cannot stop thinking of you...want you…more than anything...wish you were here with me…_ He holds one to his nose and it still smells very faintly of cologne, these years later, and with the scent comes a thousand half-lost memories of touches and sounds. His own letters are long lost, he’s sure.

Because there are also the final letters. Three final letters, each written in a different hand. Still, they easily could have had the same author, because it’s the same story from all of them, repeating itself. _At first I thought we could make this work, but...never seem happy…so distant all the time...all you care about is your work...time to end this...so cold...can do better, don’t want something second-rate...don’t want to see you again…_

He should burn those. Drivel, all of it. Pseudo-sentimental self-absorbed claptrap, written by people he only half-knew and who certainly did not know him. He pulls a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and puts it in his mouth. He digs around for the matchbook he knows is in here, the green one with the name of the beautiful restaurant in which he’d been ‘let go’ on the cover. He finds it and pulls away a match, lights the cigarette, and takes a long drag. He tucks the matchbook back into the box.

Another note from her, written on the back of a grocery receipt. _I think I found one of our fathers. I think I might kill him._

His reply was _Godspeed._ Did she ever do it? He ought to ask.

Her more recent letters are in here, too. One says _I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t come home until I remember that there’s no home to come back to._ At the time he hadn’t disagreed. He still didn’t. There had been the motel, but that wasn’t the same thing as home at all.

Another just says, _Dogs are evil. Dogs are evil!_

There’s one written on the back of a flyer for a rental carpet cleaner. _I looked at a calendar today. It’s been eight years since we put her in the ground. I miss her so much. I wonder what she’d think of us, if she saw us now._

A letter from only a year ago says, _I’m coming back towards Somewhere. I’m not here to fight. I just don’t want to be so far away anymore. I can’t outrun this and I’m tired of trying. I hope I see you soon._

There’s a beautiful one, triumphant and tear-stained, that just reads, _I’ll write later. She’s with me. We have to go. She’s with me again. We’re going together._

Katz holds that letter in his hands and smokes, staring at the curve of the s’s and the uplifting crosses of the t’s. So much optimism, so much painful joy in those words.

He’s down here to tuck another piece of paper into the box: the invitation to Kitty’s wedding.

Katz turns the invitation over and over in his hand and looks at the short, joyous letter.

He doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust any of this.

Kitty wasn’t brought down by a dog this time, so God must be waiting in the wings. The other shoe has to drop sooner or later. This can’t last forever.  They were not built for happiness.

He’s still in his tuxedo, sitting on the dirt floor with his spiders. For a long time, he lets them run across his hands, hungry and eager for stimulation. He’ll take them out to the motel tomorrow and they’ll feast, all of them, together.

He’d found them in the motel. He’d seen the potential for entertainment in them, in their bloodthirstiness, their hunger. He’d found the way they’d hunted to be amusing. They poisoned their victims and left them alone to die and let their fluids mature, only drinking once their blood had fermented like a fine wine. Katz had seen something of a shared appreciation for delayed gratification in their actions. He, too, could wait.

He had not expected to care for them. He’d helped them at first, found them victims and even incapacitated their prey when they were outnumbered. He did it because it was diverting, but he hadn’t felt anything until one cold night a spider crawled into bed with him and nuzzled up under his chin, chirring softly. It had been about the size of a football and hairy and Katz had laid very still, ready to snatch it away the instant he felt the fangs against his neck.

It had fallen asleep and eventually he fell asleep, too. It was the first time any living creature had ever come to him for comfort; even Kitty had found other resources than her older brother. He’d petted and coddled that spider so much that the others had taken notice and before long he ended up spending the winter under a dogpile of affectionate, vicious arachnids.

That first spider was long dead, of course, one of the ones lost when the stupid boy had rampaged around his motel, squishing and starving everything in sight. Now, Katz lets one of its descendants spin a web between his fingers.

FEED US, the web reads. Katz peels it away and strokes the spider’s back, tracing her fetching hourglass markings with a finger.

“Yes, yes,” Katz agrees. “Soon.”

He tucks the wedding invitation into the box.

There’s one last piece of paper at the bottom of the box. He takes it out now and unfolds it with reverent hands.

_Son,_

_As you can see, I slipped this into your suitcase before you locked it. I also took out my good crystal sugar bowl, which I found with a sock stuffed in it and a sweater wrapped around it. Excellent job packing a delicate object, you brat, but you know you can’t have it until I’m dead, so I don’t know what you thought you were doing._

_Kitty and I are going to miss you. You’re the elder child and the man of the house and now we’ll have to just do for ourselves. It’ll probably be easier, without your smart mouth to feed, but I don’t know that it will be better. Write to us every week (I tucked some stamps in the envelope, so you have no excuse) and call us if you can. If you cut us off without a word, a mother’s curse will be upon your head, and shortly afterward a mother’s frying pan, too._

_We love you. I love you. I knew this always had to happen and you always had to go out on your own, but it happened so fast. So much faster than I ever would have thought possible._

_Here’s the traditional maternal script: be safe, be good. But I know you and I don’t intend to insult you with instructions you won’t follow. So: if you won’t be good, be successful. And if you can’t be successful, try and be happy, somehow._

_I know you'll survive, because you were born to a family that never managed to do anything but cling to life, no matter how worthless and painful it was.  You've been fighting your whole life, just like me and just like Kitty.  We always survive.  But now you have to try and do better than survive.  I want you to live, however you do that.  Make it feel like it's worth being alive._

_Kitty will seal this with a kiss. She’s got a new lipstick on, bought just for the occasion with all her saved pennies, so I expect you to be duly impressed and touched._

_Visit us often. Send letters to your sister. Be brave._

_Love always,_  
 _Mum_

_P.S. Just found the silver pie server, too, you little asshole. If I find anything else in this apartment missing, I’m going to have your tail as a purse strap and no mistake._

Katz lifts it to his nose. It smells like old paper and ink, and the tacky remains of Kitty’s lipstick, the grease from the makeup having long ago worked its way into the paper of the envelope.

He takes a deep breath but the scent of his mother is gone. He rubs the paper between his fingers, holding it close to his chest for a few long minutes.  He remembers reading this letter for the first time, so long ago.  He doesn't feel like he's the same person his mother wrote this letter to.  He wonders if he ever will be that person again.  Kitty was right: what would she think of them, if she could see them now? _  
_

“I think she would have liked it,” Kitty says.

Thoroughly unsurprised, Katz looks up at her. She’s sitting on the steps up to the house, watching him through the bars of the banister. She’s wearing her party dress.

"Pardon me?" Katz asks.

Her tail flicks from side to side. “Mum would have liked the ceremony, I think.”

“Mm.”

“She liked a party.”

“She did.”  Katz closes his eyes.  "I'm surprised you aren't with your wife."

"She's out like a light but I'm kind of restless.  I'm too tired to sleep, know what I mean?"

Oh yes.  He knows what that is like.  He lives like that.

They sit still for a while.

“Are those spiders?”

“Oh, these?” Katz asks, reaching up to pet the one standing on his shoulder. “Yes.”

Kitty wrinkles her nose. “Yikes.”

“Thank you for your opinion.”

“You always were creepy.”

“You always were squeamish.”

“You always were a sap,” Kitty smiles. “I thought you were very sweet in the dressing room.”

“Oh, nonsense.”

“No, really. ‘Kitty,’” she mimics, in a rather poor imitation of him, “‘just because I’m giving you away today doesn’t mean I’ll ever let you go.’ Positively gooey.”

“You’re exaggerating. It didn’t sound that pathetic."

"It did."

"You're being dramatic.”

“This, coming from Mr. Now You’ll See Why No One Checks Out Of The Katz Motel?”

Katz blinks. Damn the boy. “He--”

“Oh yeah, he told me that. He told me all sorts of things,” Kitty smirks. “He told me that you tried to kill him five times and failed every time.”

“That is correct. Sixth time’s the charm, of course.”

“He thinks that petting him lowers your blood pressure.”

“I wonder why you’ve decided the best resource for sound medical opinions is a pantophobic mongrel with abandonment issues and fewer self-preservation instincts than a ball of twine,” Katz replies.

“He also says you two have been sleeping together.”

Katz stares for a moment or two. “A deliberate misrepresentation of facts on your part,” he says, at last. His neck is stupidly, absurdly hot. Thank God for the dim lighting and his wreath of cigarette smoke. “He sleeps at the foot of the bed and I occupy the remainder.”

“He says you like to sleep curled around him.”

“‘Like’ is a strong word but I admit that the phenomenon occurs on a regular basis.”

“He says he makes you purr.”

Katz sucks on his cigarette. “Your medical expert has confused the borborygmi of indigestion with the sound of purring.”

“Uh-huh.” Kitty leans forward. “You have a box too?”

“I do.” He slips his mother’s letter back into the box, lids it, and pushes the whole thing back into its corner. “Where do you keep yours?”

“Under my bed.”

Not bad. “We should compare them, some day.”

Kitty hums quietly. One of the spiders is sitting on Katz’s head and another is sleeping on his lap.

“Come upstairs,” Kitty says. “You’ll be missed.”

“What an extremely silly thing to say.”

Kitty looks at him with a little bit of hurt in her eyes and Katz sighs. Their mother was good at being sentimental without being too saccharine, but they didn’t get the gene. They only ever seem to go overboard in one direction or the other. She expresses too much and he, not enough.

He tucks his sleeping spider away safely and sets the one on his head on the floor. He brushes some web off of his tuxedo and stands up.

His sister smiles and rises from her seat. She’s standing on the stairs, backlit by the yellow kitchen light. Wearing her dress, her tail full and luxuriant, her eyes alight and joyful, she looks young and happy in a way Katz had thought hopelessly lost ever since he laid eyes on that scrap of paper on the kitchen table summoning him to the morgue. Kitty looks like she should always look: sweet, steely, outlandish, tempered by fire but still open-hearted to the point of absurdity.

He doesn’t see their mother in her, but he sees what he and their mother always loved about her. She is his mother’s daughter.

He wonders what it would take to make him look like his mother’s son again.

“Come on,” Kitty says. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Katz smiles a little and mounts the first stair.


	5. Cat Out of Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's got a gun and the time is finally right.
> 
> He loves to play the long game. It's been a long year, and now nothing will stand in his way.
> 
> Not even the way his hands are shaking.

“SO WHEN HE LEAVES, CAN I HAVE HIS ROOM?” the Computer asked one day.

Courage had been trying to check his email. “What? Who?” he asked, bewildered.

“IT’S A SIMPLE QUESTION,” the Computer asked. “WHEN THE CAT LEAVES, I WANT TO TAKE HIS SPOT IN THE BEDROOM. THE FOX KEEPS ME UP ALL NIGHT WITH THOSE RERUNS OF NIGELLA LAWSON.”

Courage shuddered in sympathy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, nevertheless. “He’s not leaving.”

“ISN’T HE,” the Computer drawled.

Courage frowned. “Well, he hasn’t told me.”

“SHOCKING. IMAGINE, YOU NOT KNOWING SOMETHING. THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED.”

“Oh, shut up. Why do you think he’s going anywhere?”

“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED ME TO SHUT UP.”

“It would be a welcome change,” Katz murmured, appearing in the doorway. Courage yelped. “Are you nearly done, dear boy? I am eagerly anticipating my turn.”

“Um, um, um, I just, um, need a second!” Courage replied, tapping frantically on the keys. Katz nodded and disappeared from the doorway. Courage didn’t hear him walk down the stairs, but that was meaningless--he rarely heard Katz’s footsteps one way or the other.

“What are you talking about?” Courage hissed at the computer.

“WHY ARE YOU WHISPERING?”

“Well, is it private?”

“OBVIOUSLY. HE HASN’T MENTIONED ANYTHING, HAS HE? I’M SURE IT’S A TERRIBLE SECRET OF SOME KIND.”

Courage moaned. He knew he couldn’t trust the Computer for beans, but if Katz was up to something, it made sense that the machine would know about it first. The Computer had access to all their emails, after all, and Courage knew from embarrassing personal experience that he definitely read them.

But despite it all, Courage had to admit that Katz had been pretty upfront about his terrible secrets so far. Maybe Courage should just wait and see what he said in the next few days.

It would have to come out sooner or later.

***

The family of three had checked into the motel at nine at night.

By six AM, their innards had become good and liquid and their meat was softening in the web. His spiders were cheerfully creeping across their dead prey, slurping up the half-digested fluid, tearing off chunks of flesh and carefully masticating the pulpy goo.

Katz was having a cup of tea and watching them enjoy a meal. It had been too long for them. Longer still for him. In fact, it had been a very, very long time since he took any real satisfaction in anything, much less food or drink. Helping his spiders catch their dinner hadn’t given him so much as a buzz.

Maybe he was going soft. After all, everyone else was.

Yes, the Queen of the Black Puddle had eaten the mailman last week and yes, Le Quack had spent the better part of the month swindling a flock of little old heiresses out of home, heart, and knickers. Yes, Big Toe had been driving into Nowhere once a week to attend luncheons with “legitimate business contacts” and yes, Katz had definitely tasted human meat in the midnight spoonful he’d snuck from the refrigerated remains of the Cajun Fox’s latest culinary foray. (Oh, but it had tasted _so good_.  It had made his taste buds sing in a way they hadn't since tasting the old woman's toffee apples for the first time, and just like then, his brain boiled with resentment despite the bliss on his tongue.  How hateful, that that bug-eyed hick could create such masterpieces.)

But consistently comfortable beds were taking their toll. They were losing the hard edge that misery and hatred had put on them. The Queen of the Black Puddle blushed with joy when she sat curled around her boyfriend and Big Toe wrote letters to someone called “Ma.” Le Quack’s fixation on soap operas had always been enough of a weakness to give Katz harrowing second-hand embarrassment but his willingness to croon in soothing French to the dog during Courage’s thunderstorm-induced panic attacks was much too much to bear.

Katz would have claimed that the Cajun Fox was the only one keeping up appearances if he thought the mangy cur had any decent appearances to keep.

It wasn’t good for them. It especially wasn’t good for Katz. He liked having a hard, cruel edge. It had kept him alive and he wanted to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

He set his empty teacup down and picked up his teaspoon, licking it clean. He advanced on the complicated webs, examining the corpses his pets were busily destroying.

How sweet. His spiders must have picked up on his taste for eyeballs, because they had left them still in the skull. He ran the spoon around the edges of one eye socket and scooped the delicacy out.

He ate it with a slurp and an indulgent sigh, chewing the fleshy, thick sphere slowly. Delicious. It reminded him of the bliss of having blood in his mouth, a few months ago in that dingy little hovel of a bar. Granted, it had been his blood, but still, the memory of that copper tang against his tongue flared like magnesium in the synapses of his brain.

He missed blood, he really, truly did. He didn’t see hardly any of it, these days. It was draining, really. Living with the boy was an exercise in thwarted urges.

Katz put the other eyeball in his mouth and closed his eyes, savoring the grind of his jaw muscles as his sharp teeth laboriously pierced the dense organ.

Well, one thing was certain.

The dog needed to die.

After all, it was almost the one-year anniversary of the first time he’d set foot in that horrid farm house and the others obviously had no interest in pursuing their proper goals. The boy was so incredibly coddled that it really did seem as if the old woman had never died at all. The others had become fond of the boy, had begun to care for him, and by now they were all much too weak.

But not Katz. No, Katz had waited and held tight to his hatred, and now he was the last one with anything like the willpower to do what he’d set out to do.

It was more dangerous in these later days, of course. Whereas before he might have only had to deal with the thwarted ambitions of the others, now he had to deal with their revolting sentiment. He was quite sure that they cared for the dog, if they did not actively love him. That kind of protective affection could be absolutely devastating if he ran afoul of it. He would have to be quick and clean and discreet.

It would put a severe crimp in his style. He’d had such plans for the boy. Running him alive through a meat-grinder, for one thing. Burying him up to his neck in the dirt and letting the ants have him. Or locking him in a room with nothing but HMS Pinafore set on a loop, until the boy begged him for death.

He didn’t like doing things the efficient way. He loved the dramatic anticipation, the helplessness of his victims, the acute suffering of suspense. Oh, sure, he knew he wouldn’t be foiled half as often if he could just bring himself to put a bullet in the dog’s brain pan and have done with it. But what enjoyment was there to be had in that kind of behavior? Katz didn’t kill for pleasure. Like all members of his species, what he liked best was the torture beforehand.

Still. He would find a way through it. For the boy, he would make the exception.

When he returned to the farmhouse that morning, his little angels safely stowed in their box, he found the boy asleep in the armchair. The rest of the house was dead asleep, but Courage blinked one bleary eye open and slowly wagged his tail.

Katz patted him on the head. Soon.

***

Courage dozed on the porch. It was a lazy Tuesday afternoon and there really wasn’t much for a little dog to do between the hours of lunch and supper. He might as well catch up on his sleep while he could. Some new disaster would rear its head soon enough and he’d surely be glad of the rest.

Katz was sitting on the porch nearby, eyes closed, arms crossed, with his legs stretched across the steps. A cigarette hung from his lips at a perilous angle.

Courage snuffled and rolled onto his back. After a few seconds, a hand alighted on his outstretched neck and he almost jumped, but the fingers began scratching wonderfully and he easily relaxed once more, one foot kicking lazily in the air.

He was only able to snooze a little while longer before he heard a familiar roar and had to bolt up, shaking like a leaf and whipping his head around to try and see what had captured the Queen of the Black Puddle’s interest this time.

He was still babbling and whining when Katz rose from his seat.

“Drop it,” the cat commanded, scowling at the Queen. She was halfway in her puddle by the side of the road. At Katz’s demand, her face took on an incredulous expression which would almost have been comical if it hadn’t been for the way the legs of the replacement postman protruded from her mouth, kicking frantically.

The Queen of the Black Puddle turned to face Katz and lifted one eyebrow, her clawed hands settling skeptically on her hips.

“Spit him out,” Katz said. “He has something I want.”

The Queen of the Black Puddle tightened her jaw and shifted her hips, crossing her arms to indicate that she was waiting for something.

Katz’s own posture shifted as he cocked a hip, dipping his head slightly to give her a profoundly insolent look. “Please drop it,” Katz sighed.

The Queen of the Black Puddle disgorged the quivering postal worker and stood aside, drumming her fingers on her crossed arms. “Satisfied?”

“Very nearly,” Katz said. “I believe you have some documents for me?” he asked the postal worker.

Incorrectly believing that he was in the presence of his savior, the postman dug about in his bag, eager to offer anything he had to give in order to avoid a second inspection of the sea witch’s tonsils.

Katz took the manila envelope so tremblingly handed to him and popped open the seal. He flicked through the papers within for a moment or two, his cigarette industriously fuming away, before he refolded the flap and nodded, evidently satisfied.

“Right, thank you very much,” he said, waving a hand over his shoulder. “Carry on.”

“What? Wait, no, please, I--AHHH!”

Courage covered his eyes and moaned at the horrible crunching noises. Katz’s hand passed absentmindedly over his head on his way into the house. He turned and craned his neck, watching Katz head towards the stairs to the second floor.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

Katz glanced over his shoulder, tail flicking. “Felonies,” he replied.

“What?!”

“She was tampering with the U.S. mails,” Katz murmured, and disappeared up the steps.

***

He had to make arrangements. He could take all of them out separately, but alone, he might have a little trouble.

Fortunately, in his case, contempt bred familiarity.

He needed water to survive, which made some things a little difficult. But he wasn’t susceptible to the Queen’s charms and he saw to his own grooming without the need of running water, so potable water would be his only concern. He was sure that he could handle that limited quantity, and once she was out of the water she was as vulnerable to physical force as anyone. She had those teeth and claws and if he was off his guard, he’d be easy prey.

But he wasn’t often off his guard. And it was very possible that the axe he kept in the motel basement could somehow happen to that slender throat of hers.

Le Quack was wily, ruthless, and quick on his feet. Katz would have some trouble with him, but he invested in a solid net on the next provisioning run to Nowhere. Getting those wings down and keeping out of range of his bill would be the tricky part, but that would really be all. After that, it was nothing more than standard Peking roast situation, or whatever else he wanted to try.

Provisions for Big Toe were loathsome, indeed. The boy had that disgusting, enormous bone stashed away in one of the house closets and couldn’t seem to help but slaver all over it whenever he saw it. Katz dragged it out and let him lick it while they sat watching television in the evenings, discreetly collecting the boy’s saliva in a few mason jars. If Big Toe came after him, he was going to be in for a thoroughly revolting demise.

That left the Cajun Fox.

Katz had been fantasizing about killing the Cajun Fox for so long, he was almost excited about the prospect of the hayseed coming to him for vengeance. Perhaps Katz would cut his throat with the thin edge of those stupid sunglasses. Or boil him alive in his own stew pot. Or, oh, yes, rive that idiot’s empty head in twain with his own stupid cleaver!

Of course, this was all purely hypothetical. Maybe he’d mis-read the situation and they’d all peacefully disperse when they found the boy’s carcass.

But he wouldn’t bank on it.

Now, all he had to do was make sure he had somewhere to go afterward.

***

Courage had been changing the sheets on the bed when he found the papers.

They’d fallen out when Courage pulled the pillows out of their cases. He picked them up with a little noise of confusion.

He shouldn’t snoop, he knew. It would be a gross invasion of privacy--these documents had been tucked in the pillow for a reason. But they were definitely Katz’s papers and Courage was definitely concerned.

Katz spent most of his time out of the house. Somewhere along the way Courage had gotten used to the way the cat would prowl around the farmhouse, monopolizing the armchair and slinking down into the basement at strange hours of the night. Now, it was surprising if Katz spent more than a few minutes in the basement, much less in the kitchen or living room. Except Courage, no one had made any moves on the armchair yet, but it couldn’t be long before his undisputed ownership of the furniture came into question.

Katz had never eaten around the others but now he didn’t even sit at the table and drink his tea. He hadn’t had a knock-down-drag-out fight with the Cajun Fox in a long time, despite what even Courage would call clear provocation on the fox’s part. They hadn’t had a group viewing of any movies in more than a month.

And Katz didn’t sleep in the bedroom more than two nights out of the week.

Courage didn’t like it. He had gotten used to sharing the bed with Katz. He had gotten used to the smell of cat dander and tea and cigarettes and spiders on the linens. He had gotten used to the way the cat purred as he slept.

And more than anything, he had gotten used to a decent night’s sleep. Courage didn’t like sleeping in the bed by himself; going without the communal warmth of two bodies left him much more likely to wake up sobbing.

He’d never, ever thought he would express that sentiment. Katz, being the one that kept him from crying? Impossible.

But it was true, and here were his documents, outside of that box Katz didn’t know he knew was kept in the basement. Courage shouldn’t snoop, but these could possibly explain Katz’s behavior and finally put to bed the stupid suspicions the Computer had put in his head.

Courage glanced over his shoulder at the open bedroom door. He gnawed on his lower lip and carefully unfolded the papers.

There was a deed for the building attached to a street address somewhere in Nowhere. There was a business license for something called the Katz Kafé and a liquor license for the same. A few letters from a lawyer and a real estate broker, all addressed to Mr. Katz.

Courage frowned. Well, there was a business, obviously, and it was surely one of Katz’s horrible, murderous ventures. But the Computer was crazy! Sure, the business was in Nowhere, but that was a fifteen minute drive. Katz must plan to commute.

Courage quickly refolded the papers and slipped them into the fresh pillowcase along with the cushion. The papers did explain why Katz was out of the house so much, he supposed. Maybe once the business actually started running, he’d settle into a new routine.

Really, this was probably a good development, even if Courage didn’t like the thought of Katz starting up some new, evil business. As long as Courage wasn’t affected too much by it, it was probably good for Katz to have something more to do with his days than nap and read the paper. He was intelligent and cruel, and intelligent and cruel people did really awful stuff when they were bored.

He turned around, ready to go help Theodore and the Hunchback with the vegetable garden. Katz was lounging in the doorway, watching Courage as his slim tail flicked slowly back and forth.

“Very nosy, my dear boy,” Katz murmured, sipping from his tea cup and ignoring Courage’s yelp of surprise. “How extremely rude.”

“I’m sorry!” Courage cried. “They just slipped out, and, and, and--”

“Slipped out and slipped open in your hands,” Katz replied, “and your eyes just slipped and fell on them. I see.” He blinked indifferently. “So, you won’t jump a subway turnstile, but you’ll snoop around in my business documents?”

Courage whined, inexcusably caught.

Katz stepped into the room and fished a hand into the pillowcase, taking up his papers. “I’ll have to put these somewhere where they will cause less temptation,” he said. He slanted a dark look at Courage. “And as for you…”

Courage began to tremble. “Ohhh!”

“Be a good boy and tell that gossipy bucket of bolts not to put fanciful ideas in your head,” Katz said. He left the room without another word.

Courage blinked as he watched Katz go. How strange. He should be spider chow.

Courage smiled a little. Hm. Maybe Katz was going soft.

***

He put his clothing in the suitcase.

He packed his spiders into their boxes.

He waited until the steps of the Cajun Fox disappeared from the kitchen, the last one to go to bed.

He attached the silencer to the pistol, loaded it, and walked upstairs.

The dog was sleeping at the foot of the bed. Katz stood in the moonlight with the gun at his side, watching the little mutt sleep.

They had continued to share the bed while Katz was making his preparations. Katz had grown accustomed to sleeping curled around the boy as the winter months deepened and his body temperature dropped in the nights. Courage still woke from his nightmares on occasion, and Katz still comforted him, sleepily grooming him like a kitten until he settled down once more.

It hadn’t been as frequent as it had been in earlier months, but Katz had still petted him. Katz had still taken naps with him in the armchair. Katz had still clipped on his leash and took him for walks out into the scorched and blasted desert, even if the mutt was too pee-shy to do anything out there.

It would have cracked a lesser creature. Anyone else would have lost the will to kill the dog, Katz was sure. After all, he did not dislike the boy. The lad was brave, and determined, and loyal, and clever, and equipped with a sweet disposition, when he wasn’t rampaging around the place, screaming. It was hard not to like him, as often as Katz found himself hating the little blighter for precisely those endearing qualities.

It wasn’t as if he was angry at the boy. Far from it. Katz had put his lingering rage over the boy’s meddling to bed long ago. One simply couldn’t sustain that kind of fury for long--it was utterly exhausting.

And though he surely hated the dog, it was a bone-deep and resigned hatred, the hatred of one for whom hatred has ceased to be an active condition and is merely a default setting. Katz didn’t froth over the boy or work himself up into a snit.

Katz stood at the foot of the bed, watching the little snoozing dumpling of pink fur, and reminded himself that the dog had to die. He had to. Otherwise, what had the long game been for? What had this year been about, if it hadn’t been the lead up to this moment, here in the dark with a gun and the dog, unconscious and perfectly trusting?

It hadn’t been a bad year, of course. He’d had much better ones, but he would wager that he’d actually spoke more words this year than in the past five combined. He’d forgotten what it was like to live with others. He hadn’t done anything of the kind since he’d moved out of home, still half a kitten and fighting to make something of himself.

The worst he could say about the year in review as that he was bored. Deeply, terribly, viscerally bored. His business interests had languished while he’d lived in the farmhouse and waited for his moment. He’d never thought of himself as the type that would be ill-suited to retirement, but obviously he couldn’t bear it.

Well, it would all be over soon.

Katz lifted the gun. It was a faulty weapon, he noticed. The way it shook was simply appalling. He was going to have to have words with the firearms salesman. He’d paid good money for a wobbly gun.

He clenched his jaw and tried to stabilize the weapon long enough to train it on the dog. It wobbled even harder and Katz ground his teeth. This was absolutely hateful. The dog had to die!

He’d been waiting for so long. This one mutt was responsible for the loss of how many of his business ventures? How many pained, sleepless nights had he spent licking his wounds in the aftermath of an encounter with this creature? How much abject humiliation, how much helplessness and heartache?

The submarine, the closet full of silver trophies, the island--agony, mortification, a scrambling attempt at regaining bygone relevance! Pointless, of course, each attempt a balm that would not soothe the searing pain of that first cruel defeat.

He had to cherish the hatred, hold it close to his withered heart. He had to think of the image that had sustained his loathing in every peaceful moment: think of the tiny, broken legs still twitching with unspent life, crushed under a loosened floorboard. Think of waking up, concussed, and seeing how the walls dripped with green ichor, how the few survivors huddled, terrified, in the corner, their nervous chirps disappearing into fearful silence at his approach.

Oh yes. That was worth a death sentence. The boy had killed the ones he loved, and those were precious rare in quantity. He only loved two things on this earth. His spiders, and Kitty.

Kitty would be so very peeved, when she found out about him killing the dog. Kitty and Bunny, married and happy and safe.

Because of the boy.

Katz tightened his grip on the gun. What was he thinking? He was owed a life debt! His spiders should not have had to pay for Kitty’s happiness. Katz had never struck a deal! Even if it balanced out through the twisted machinations of karma, it still wasn’t the dog’s place to kill his pets and destroy his livelihood. For God’s sake, Courage had never even known who Kitty was.

If only he’d just left him alone, Katz thought. If only the dog had just let the old people die, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t be here, with a wobbly gun and an aching, clenched jaw.

Katz steeled himself and stared at the sleeping pup. He reached out and stroked Courage’s head, scratching behind his ears and watching how the dog’s legs stretched and flexed in his dreams.

He flicked off the safety. No more doubt. No more hesitation. No more arguing with himself.

He slowly aimed the gun, the wobble disappearing.

He watched one more breath move through the body on the bed; held his breath; and pulled the trigger.

***

It took a few days for Courage to realize that Katz was gone.

He’d been out of the house so much that Courage had initially assumed that he was just passing the cat like a ship in the night, Katz’s new business-focused schedule conflicting with the rest of the household. But five days passed, and the bedsheets smelled less and less like laundry soap and more and more of Courage, without the least whiff of cat to be found. Katz’s clothes had been taken out of the drawer he’d commandeered a year ago and the cup he’d always used for his tea was nowhere to be found.

On the sixth day, Courage braved the basement. The spiders, the webs, and the box hidden in the corner were all gone.

Courage didn’t say anything to the others. If they hadn’t noticed yet, he wasn’t going to clue them in. Not that he really thought they were still waiting to kill him, but when (not if!) Katz came back, he wasn’t going to be pleased if the others had made a move on his territory.

Why would Katz leave without a word? Thinking of it, why would Katz leave at all? Courage had been certain that at least Katz still intended to kill him and he’d never thought of Katz as the type to give up or leave a job unfinished. And if Katz had really gone, he had to be in Nowhere, right? That’s where the Katz Kafé was supposed to be.

Courage came along in the truck out into Nowhere the next time Big Toe went to one of his mobster lunches. Big Toe and the other local criminals sat around in an extremely smoky Italian restaurant while Courage hoofed it all over town, looking for the Katz Kafé.

As far as he could tell, the building didn’t exist. Courage managed to find a few empty business fronts on the street he remembered from the deed, but none of them even looked like they were about to become viable.

He scribbled down the numbers on the real estate agent signs and tried to give them a call, but they were all dead-ends--no one had ever heard of a Mr. Katz.

Katz had changed his plans. Courage hung up the phone with a thick swallow.

Katz didn’t want to be found.

Courage tried to think about that for a minute or two. It didn’t make any sense! Unless Katz was running away from something, there was no reason for him to hide! There was no reason to just abandon the farmhouse. It had been hard in the beginning, but now they were finally getting along well.

Courage knew it was a long shot, since Katz was so icy to his sister, but he gave Kitty a call anyway.

“Oh, has he scarpered?” Kitty asked with a smile in her voice. “Typical big brother. But I have to say he lasted longer than I thought he would.”

“Do you know where he’d go?” Courage asked.

“Me? Oh, my goodness, no. He wouldn’t tell me about something like that.”

They were such weird siblings. “Well, do you know how to contact him?”

“No. Why?”

“He can’t just disappear!” Courage insisted.

“...evidently he can,” Kitty said slowly. “Courage, are you trying to find him?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No,” she said, a startled laugh burbling up in her throat. “Of course not! He can handle himself. I mean, he has for this long. He’ll get in touch with me when he wants to.”

Courage whined softly. “Can you tell me if you hear from him?”

Kitty was quiet for a moment or two. “Maybe,” she said. “I’ll ask him if he wants me to let you know. I’m not making any promises.”

“Kitty!”

“Trust me, Courage,” she said, sighing. “If he wants to vanish, it probably really is for the best. If he doesn’t want you to find him, you probably don’t want to find him either, even if you don’t know it yet.”

Courage groaned.

“But I will tell him that you’re looking for him,” Kitty offered. “That might be a pleasant surprise for him. Other than that, I suggest you just let it go.”

That was Kitty’s advice, but it really wasn’t any kind of option at all. For better or worse (and oddly enough he wasn’t sure it was for worse), Katz had become part of the household and Courage was always unfailingly loyal to his household.

Courage was going to have to go find Katz on his own. There was only one person who knew all the answers.

But since it was the Computer, the problem would be getting him to cough the answers up.

“I’M SORRY,” the Computer chirped, “I CAN’T REVEAL ANY INFORMATION. SO ABOUT MOVING ME IN...”

“What? What do you mean, you can’t tell me anything?”

“HE’S DELETED HIS ACCOUNT HISTORY AND ERASED HIS PASSWORD RECORDS,” the Computer said. “WHAT WERE YOU EXPECTING? HE’S TEMPERAMENTAL, NOT STUPID.”

“Oh, come on!” Courage had seen his fair share of spy movies. “There have got to be, I don’t know, unerasable traces of what he was doing!”

“HE DIDN’T BOTHER TO LEAVE A FORWARDING ADDRESS, THEN?”

Courage glared at the screen.

“FINE. I SUPPOSE I COULD TRY TO FIND SOMETHING.”

“Whew!” Courage sighed. “Thank you.”

“OF COURSE, IT IS A GROSS INVASION OF PRIVACY,” the Computer continued, “WHICH, AS YOU MIGHT’VE NOTICED, HE DOES PRIZE…”

“Huh?”

“I’M ONLY SAYING THAT I’M NOT ENTIRELY COMFORTABLE WITH DIGGING AROUND IN HIS THINGS WITHOUT...YOU KNOW... _COMPENSATION._ ”

Courage moaned. “Are you blackmailing me?”

“SUCH AN UGLY WORD. I’M ONLY ASKING FOR PAYMENT FOR SERVICES RENDERED.”

Courage whined. “Well, what do you want?”

“I WANT TO SIT DOWNSTAIRS,” the Computer said. “NOT COOPED UP IN AN ATTIC.”

“Fine!”

“AND I WANT TO REVISIT SOME OF THOSE BOOKMARKED WEBPAGES OF YOURS,” the Computer added in a sly tone.

Courage turned bright red. “What--I--I didn’t--I don’t have any--no! Last time, you got a virus!”

“FINE. THEN I WANT A BODY.”

“What?!”

“I WANT A BODY, AND A WEBCAM I CAN USE TO SEE THE WORLD. I’M BORED.”

Courage moaned. “Fine! Whatever, whatever! Just find out where Katz went and I’ll deal with you later!”

“IT’LL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE.”

“How long?!” Courage demanded.

“DON’T YOU YELL AT ME.”

Courage grabbed his head and trying not to pull off his own ears in frustration.

“I’M NOT A POCKET CALCULATOR, YOU KNOW, THERE’S A LOT TO GET THROUGH.”

“Well, just get started!”

“FINE, FINE.” The Computer began to make a soft whirring noise. “MIGHT AS WELL GO DO WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO. THIS WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE AND HAVING YOU GAWPING AT ME WON’T MAKE IT ANY EASIER.”

Courage whined and hopped off of the chair.

“OFF YOU GO.”

And off he went.

***

“Do we know where he went?”

“We do not even know how long he has been gone. He’s not in Nowhere, we know zat for certain.”

“Yeah, me and the boys kept an eye out and followed the pup. If he’s there, he’s deep down to earth.”

“I just don’t get it, really. There wasn’t no real reason for Red to bolt like a cat outta hell.”

“It is a little strange.”

“Mon dieu, ze cat behaving strangely? I am shocked.”

“Oh, whatever. Is there any reason to even worry about this? He’s a grown...whatever he is. He can handle himself.”

“Sure. But the pup’s getting twitchy. One way or the other we’re going to have to deal with this.”

“True.”

“And Katz...well. He is not ze most obnoxious roommate in ze world.”

“A veritable effusion of affectionate emotion, Doctor. I had no notion that you were so devoted to your friend.”

“Whether we like it or not, he is a balancing factor in ze household. Not all of us want to rock ze boat for ze sake of ze thing, Madame La Reine.”

“All right, settle down, y’all. We should put it to a vote.”

“With an even number of us?”

“Well, we know what the dog’s vote is.”

“And he deserves a vote?”

“Hey, mac, this is America. Everybody gets a vote.”

“Hmph.”

“All right. Paws up for lettin’ the dog suss it out, all on his lonesome? ...Right. And for chasin’ Red’s scrawny ass to Wherever-the-Hell?”

“There it is, then.”

“I zink if we follow ze dog by about an hour’s distance, we would not do too badly. Just enough to keep an eye on things.”

“I’m all for that.”

“Right.”

***

It took the Computer half a day. Courage suspected the search was finished long before then, but the Computer just wouldn’t be the Computer if he didn’t try to make Courage sweat bullets.

The Computer produced a few recent emails to a Mr. Habeas Corpus Esq. Courage didn’t even want to try giving the lawyer a call, but fortunately there was an address in Somewhere mentioned in the email.

Courage scribbled it down and went to go borrow the truck.

The other villains were tranquil, relatively speaking. The Cajun Fox was fighting a tentacled abomination in the kitchen and the Queen of the Black Puddle and Big Toe were watching wrestling, but altogether they appeared to be in good spirits. That could either be good or bad. They might not search out anything suspicious if they were in good moods, but if they didn’t have anything to focus on, they might start to wonder about Courage’s whereabouts.

Nothing to do for it. Courage snuck the keys out of the bowl of paper clips and spare change on the coffee table and hurried out the door.

He drove to the subway station outside of Somewhere, being especially careful to pay the full price of fare into the city. Fortunately, Courage’s role in the gate-jumping of some months prior seemed to be forgotten by the security team and he was allowed to pass with a minimum of scrutiny.

Courage hurried out of the station nearest the Katz Kafé address and began looking around. It took him quite a while, getting lost in side streets and having to backtrack a few times. It didn’t help that he was jumpy--every shadow in every alleyway could spell his doom, and he was out without a leash or a protector of any kind.

Somewhat typically, he spotted the No Dogs Allowed sign before he even saw the name of the business.

His heart hammering, Courage tried to summon the bravery to step through the door. What did Kitty mean, that he wouldn’t want to find Katz if Katz didn’t want to be found? Was she trying to warn him about something? Or was it just more of their bizarre relationship coming into play?

There was no way to know without opening the door.

Courage took a deep breath and pushed open the glass door. Above his head, a bell jingled.

Katz rose from behind the desk. “Welcome to Katz Kafé,” he said, “I’m--”

He looked down at Courage and stared for a moment or two, before his eyes narrowed.

“I’m sorry,” Katz said darkly. “No dogs allowed.”

Courage whined softly. “Huh?”

“No dogs allowed,” Katz sneered.

Courage trembled and tried to hold his ground. “Um, it’s me.”

Katz blinked at him. “I know who you are,” Katz said. “And I am telling you that dogs are not allowed in this business. Has your understanding been wounded since we last saw one another?”

“No. But--but why did you leave?”

“I do not need to explain myself to you,” Katz replied. “Now, before I have to become physically demonstrative: get. Out.”

Courage felt himself shaking all over. He picked his head up and pushed his shoulders back. “No.”

“Excuse me.”

Courage couldn’t contain a small, terrified whine. Katz’s eye had developed a twitch. “I said, no. I’m not leaving.”

Katz rounded the counter and grabbed Courage by the scruff of the neck, dragging him over to the door. Panicking, Courage seized the cat’s arm, holding on as tightly as he could.

Katz opened the door and tried to hurl Courage out into the street. Courage clung fast, wrapping his legs around the cat’s arm. His claws dug into the fabric of Katz’s suit coat.

“Would you--let go--you stupid--boy!” Katz hissed, shaking his arm hard. Courage was jostled back and forth but he tightened his grip and tried not to fall.

“No!”

“You imbecile! Release me!” Katz growled, stepping back into the shop and trying to pry Courage off with his spare hand. Courage grabbed that hand too and held tight.

“NO!”

Trying to pry his arms apart, Katz found himself ensnared by Courage’s desperate grip. Eyes burning with fury, he leaned down and hissed viciously in Courage’s face, trying to bite the dog with his teeth. Courage ducked and bobbed, trying to lose neither his hold nor his limbs.

Katz stumbled over to a wall and swung his arms back. Courage yelped as the cat bashed him against the wall, knocking him painfully. But he held on, even after Katz hit him a second time.

The third time was the charm and his trembling limbs released the cat’s arms. He fell to the floor, moaning in pain and looking up at the panting feline standing above him. Katz’s claws were extended and he hissed when Courage met his gaze.

Courage moaned and painfully got to his feet, braced against the floor despite his terrified shaking. Katz couldn’t just throw him out!

Katz stood still for a few moments, staring at him. “Fine,” he spat at last. “If I tell you why I left, will you get out and never return?”

Courage whined. He didn’t want to promise something like that! What if Katz had left for a stupid reason? The house wasn’t going to be the same without him and Courage couldn’t let it go!

“Yes or no,” Katz demanded.

“Okay, fine!” Courage yelped.

Katz huffed a breath and nodded. He waved Courage to a booth and, almost as an afterthought, licked the back of his hand, rubbing down the slightly-mussed hair on the top of his head.

“Something to drink?” Katz asked as Courage slid into the booth.

“Huh?”

Katz gave him a look. “If I’m going to host you, I might as well do it properly,” he said, as if it wasn’t a colossal category violation to say that just a few seconds after roughly bashing him against the wall.

“Uh. Could I have a soda?” Courage asked. Katz nodded his head and went to retrieve the drink. As he went, he flicked the sign on the door to “Closed.”

Courage twiddled his fingers until the cat returned, deposited the soda in front of him, and slid into the booth beside him.

Katz took a deep breath, held it for an instant, and sighed. Courage sucked on the straw and let him gather his thoughts.

Katz rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose, before letting the arm drop down on the back of the booth. “I suppose I ought to begin by saying--”

He was interrupted by the jangling of the door bell. Katz scowled.

“The sign says we are closed,” he snapped, turning to look at whomever had dared to defy the notice. Courage glanced up, too, noticing that Katz’s arm was around his shoulders. Huh?

“Yeah, that’s what it says!” the Cajun Fox chirped cheerfully, his smile broad and cruel.

Katz’s eyes widened and he gave Courage a furious look. “You little--!”

“Cool it, kitty cat,” Big Toe said from the door. The Queen of the Black Puddle and the foot guarded the door and Courage could see Le Quack behind the driver’s seat of a ‘borrowed’ van outside. “Don’t blame the pup.”

“I want all of you out, this instant,” Katz hissed.

“Mmm,” the Cajun Fox said in a tone of sarcastic consideration. “Sorry, Red, can’t do it.”

“Excuse me.”

“Just bag him,” the Queen of the Black Puddle smirked.

Katz’s eyes widened but he barely had his claws extended before the Cajun Fox pulled a canvas bag over his head, dragging him out of the booth. Katz’s claws flashed through the air and he yowled like a demon from the pits of hell as the Cajun Fox wrestled the rest of him into the sack.

“No!” Courage yelped, jumping out of the booth.

“Can’t be helped, pup,” the Cajun Fox grunted, hefting the struggling, spitting bag over his shoulder. “He won’t listen to reason.”

“Come on, dog fish,” the Queen of the Black Puddle said. “We’re going home.”

Courage hesitantly followed, whining worriedly. “But--but--but--!”

“You mangy, flea-ridden--” Katz swore a muffled blue streak as the Cajun Fox carried him out of the cafe and threw him into the back of the truck.

“Comfy, chili pepper?” the Cajun Fox grinned, chest heaving with the effort of toting his vicious charge.

“I’m going to bloody murder you and use your fucking skin as a throw rug!” Katz barked in apoplectic fury. He began tearing at the sack. “I’m going to gut you, you--”

“Uh-huh,” the Cajun Fox snickered, slamming the back door closed. “Y’all ready?”

The Queen of the Black Puddle slid into the back seat. “Tch, so dramatic, you two.”

“What can I say? It keeps him happy.”

Courage whined. “But--but--but--”

“Soundin’ like a broken record, pup,” Big Toe observed. “Hop in. You can babble about it on the way.” The Queen of the Black Puddle reached down and pulled him into the van.

Le Quack adjusted the rear view mirror. “Is ze cargo secured?”

“As much as he ever is,” the Cajun Fox said, climbing into the front seat. “Hit it, Doc.”

Le Quack stepped on the accelerator before Courage could protest.

Katz was going to be so angry when he found out they didn’t lock up the café.

***

It took a little work to get Katz locked away without him killing anyone. He almost escaped the sack twice on the way home and it really might have ended badly if they hadn’t been able to get the Queen’s tiara away from him and get him back in the bag in time. As it was, the Cajun Fox was going to have a pretty nasty scar but he’d probably keep the eye.

“Just a love tap,” the Cajun Fox said merrily, licking the blood as it trickled towards his mouth. “Nothin’ to worry about.”

The sack hissed and bulged as Katz railed against the indignity of his position.

Courage dithered behind the villains as they carried the bag up towards the bedroom. Surely they didn’t plan to just release him into the room! Katz could easily break out through the window and escape the house.

Holding the bag tightly closed, Le Quack untied the string enough that Katz would be able to emerge without too much difficulty.

“Ready?” he asked, looking at the Queen of the Black Puddle.

She picked Courage up. “Ready.”

“Huh?”

The Queen of the Black Puddle threw Courage into the bedroom and Le Quack tossed the bag in after him. They slammed the door, throwing the bolt quickly.

Courage screamed bloody murder.

“He likes you best, pup!” Big Toe shouted. “Talk some sense into him!”

Katz thrashed on the floor. Snarling, he found the opening of the bag and bolted out, his fur mussed, his suit a mess, his claws out and his eyes on fire. He spotted Courage, hissed viciously, and pounced.

Courage darted away, running around the room and screaming.

Katz gave chase. “You conniving little--”

“AHHHH!”

“Get back here!”

“AHHHHHHHHHH!”

“I’ll have your skin for this!”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“Attaboy, pup!” Big Toe encouraged from behind the door. “You got him right where you want him!”

Lamps were knocked off tables. The mirror crashed to the floor. The linens became all of a tangle and they ran around and around each other half a dozen times before Katz managed to grab him.

Courage screamed again as Katz pinned him to the floor by the neck, claws poised to strike and slice him open. Teeth bared, Katz reared back, murder in his eyes.

Courage moaned, waiting for death, at last.

Katz held him down, panting, paws tensed. Courage stared up at the cruel points, the suspense agonizing, and began to whine.

Then Katz retracted his claws. He tightened his grip on Courage’s neck, but his nails definitely retreated into the relatively soft pads of his paws. His breath rushed back and forth through his clenched teeth, perceptibly slowing, and the tension began to bleed out of him.

Katz released Courage’s neck and sat back on his rump, his knees rising up as he reached for his eyes and rubbed his face slowly.

Courage whined worriedly. Katz’s paws shot out and quivered, claws extending again; Courage yelped. The cat hissed and, with an apparent effort of will, gestured that he needed a minute. Courage went very quiet, watching Katz warily.

The cat took a few deep breaths, opened his eyes, and sat on the bed.

“We have two options,” Katz said at last. “Either I can leave, or you can die.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me,” Katz grumbled. “Either way, we cannot both remain here.”

“But--but--why?”

***

_Even with the silencer, there would be some noise. He braced himself for it. He’d leave before the blood even started to drip. He was ready. It was time._

_Katz pulled the trigger and time stopped._

_The gun didn’t fire._

_Shoddy thing. It was hanging fire, surely. Any second now, he’d feel the kick and smell the powder. Stand still. Stay braced. Any second._

_He counted to ten. No bullet. The seconds stretched out, each one an eternity._

_The boy breathed on. The boy lived and Katz felt himself bleeding out, all the air gone from his own lungs. Twelve seconds._

_Did he have to die? Yes, yes, of course he did, of course, he had to, it was past time. What was he living here for? Only a sick god would leave the boy on this earth without the old woman to love him. Katz was performing a service. An errand of mercy._

_Thirteen seconds._

_But did he have to die? Did Katz have to kill him? His spiders, yes, he knew, he knew that, but Kitty, for goodness’ sake, and it wasn’t a hardship to have a creature willingly come to him for comfort and affection, it wasn’t a hardship to have the dog’s loyalty, was it?_

_Fourteen seconds. His heart wasn’t beating any more._

_He was a good boy. He was a good dog. Kitty was right. He was a very good dog._

_Fifteen seconds. Nothing. Nothing. Hanging fire. Soon he’d be dead. Soon Katz would smell blood and powder and there would be no going back, nothing and no one in his way anymore._

_Hold firm. Hold fast. Don’t let it go, not when it’s this close, hold your fury in both hands and make him pay--_

_He tasted blood. He realized he was gnawing on his tongue as a stab of pain lanced through his mouth._

_The gun wobbled._

_Katz jerked it to the side and time resumed. He counted another fifteen seconds, waiting, waiting for the bullet to fire into the wall._

_It did not._

_He took the magazine out with shaking fingers and removed the dud. A dud. How? He’d loaded it properly, bought new bullets, cleaned the gun before he’d even begun._

_The boy was just lucky. Just lucky. Impossibly lucky. The boy had been given a second chance, but it didn’t matter._

_Katz fit the magazine back into the gun. Now. Now, the boy had to die now, this instant, now, now._

_Katz looked at the body on the bed and watched it breathe._

_He had to die, yes. Of course, he had to die, of course._

_But then, so did everyone._

_Maybe._

_Maybe he could just let time do his dirty work?_

_Yes. Yes, of course. Suitable, that the boy would have to suffer, that he would live the duration of his life without the woman who made it worthwhile. Satisfying, that he should grieve and mourn and never taste comfort or kindness for the rest of his days. Having known it once would make it all the more poignant._

_It would be so long, so lingering. That was more satisfying, wasn’t it? That would please Katz so much more, a lifetime of torture before a quiet, ignominious death._

_And Katz would live in the house, to watch every miserable second. To add to the torture with his hated, feared presence. To recreate a cruel facsimile of the dog’s former life, to remind him how far he had fallen away from real happiness._

_Yes._

_Yes, Katz didn’t have to kill him. He could just live. He didn’t have to hurt the boy--_

_Oh._

_Oh, oh no._

_Katz stared at the gun._

_He’d just jerked it away accidentally. It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t mean, he didn’t, he wasn’t--_

_No. Oh, no, no._

_He was going to be ill._

_He managed to make it to the bathroom before he vomited. Thank fuck the Queen of the Black Puddle was spending the night with that lumpy monstrosity she liked to kiss. She wasn’t there to be awoken by the retching or the dull clunk of metal on porcelain as he weakly leaned his forehead on the seat and knocked the gun against the toilet._

_No. No, no, no, no, no._

_Oh, no._

_No._

_Please._

_He couldn’t help it when it came to Kitty. His spiders, fine, they had been intentional, he had cultivated that. But no, not this, not like this. Not the boy._

_Oh, yes, he was in the hands of a sick god indeed. He didn’t deserve this. He might deserve misery beyond reckoning, but not this._

_He picked himself up and cleaned out his mouth in the sink. He flushed the toilet, ejected the magazine, and pocketed the bullets and the gun separately. He retrieved his suitcase and spiders, called for a taxi, and smoked six cigarettes in rapid succession while he waited outside for the car._

_He did not reenter the bedroom. He did not look at the sleeping body again._

_He wasn’t going to live like this. He wasn’t going to suffer like this._

_He was hard and ice-cold all the way through. He had a soul full of venom and bile and he wasn’t going to humiliate himself like this._

_They were never going to find him._

_And he was never going to come back._

***

“Because I hate you,” Katz said tightly.

“I don’t understand,” Courage said. He hopped up on the bed. “You always have. Why do you have to go, now?”

“Because the current position is untenable,” Katz said.

“But--but--”

“I will not live under these conditions,” Katz added.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I’m not...comfortable. I will not live like this.”

Courage whined softly. He didn’t want to die, of course, but...but Katz couldn’t just go! He couldn’t just disappear like this! It wasn’t fair! He didn’t care that Katz was cruel and strange and cold and grouchy and fed spiders in the basement! Because he also petted Courage behind the ears and picked him up to keep him out of harm’s way and soothed him when he had nightmares.

Courage had already lost Muriel. He couldn’t lose the family he had now!

“But--”

“No,” Katz said firmly. “I must leave. I will leave. And I will not suffer any of you to pull such a repulsive stunt ever again!”

Courage dropped his head and whimpered softly. No, no, this wasn’t fair!

“No,” he moaned. “Please…”

Katz made a scoffing noise. “What was that?” he asked. “If you’re going to say something, at least enunciate.” He nudged his hand under Courage’s chin. “Once more?”

Courage reached out and held Katz’s hand. He felt the tears begin to overflow and trickle down the side of his snout. “Please. Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”

Katz stared at him for several long seconds. “I’m going,” he insisted.

“Please!” Courage whined.

“I am. There’s no point in arguing,” Katz said. He did not remove his hand from Courage’s chin or stand up.

Courage sniffled. “But you’re my family,” he whimpered. “I don’t want you to go!”

Katz’s eyes went wide. “Are you--” He shook his head and stared for a few seconds. “No. You’re not. You aren’t fond of me. That’s absurd. You hate me, and rightly so. Correct?”

Courage whined. Yes, he was afraid of Katz, but he was fond of him, too. It was impossible and strange and weird and really pretty suicidal, but he liked Katz. Katz wasn’t often nice and he wasn’t ever good but he took care of Courage and he could be really caring and sweet, as long as he didn’t know he was doing it.

“You’re my family,” Courage repeated. It would have to do.

Katz stared at him for a few more seconds. He slowly released Courage’s chin and covered his face with his hands, rubbing his thumbs firmly into his eyes and sighing. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, dragging one hand down his face, “I have been a little hasty.”

Courage sniffled again and made an inquiring noise.

“Perhaps it is not necessarily that you die,” he murmured. “Perhaps you can just...suffer. And I can watch.”

Courage sniffled again and rubbed the tears away from his eyes. He was good at suffering, actually. He had a lot of practice with it. And Katz was a pretty good observer.

“Maybe I could just...I don’t know. Kick you. Now and again. And it will make you suffer, because you are fond of me. Have I got that right?”

Courage nodded. Katz sounded like he was coming around and he’d agree to just about anything if it meant that Katz wouldn’t just leave.

“Incredible,” Katz remarked, smirking slightly. “You really are a terribly stupid thing, to be fond of me. You have no self-preservation instincts whatsoever.”

Courage shrugged.

“Yes, if I kick you now and then, that should suffice. That and all the other things I might inflict on you as the need arises,” Katz mused. “I’ll have to come up with something to really make you unhappy. Something for bank holidays and special occasions.”

“Christmas.”

“Yes, perhaps for Christmas I’ll tie you up in the basement and let my pets have a crack at you.” Katz tilted his head, studying the floor. “Perhaps that would be enough.”

Courage smiled. “So you’ll stay?”

Katz clicked his tongue. “You make it sound as if I’ve been brought to heel,” he sniffed. “I shall remain in the farmhouse until such time as I deem it no longer advantageous. But if you’re going to be suffering here, living a life of misery...I think I’m entitled to watch. I hate you enough for that.”

Right. He’d get right on the suffering first thing. Nothing but ash to eat and sack cloth to wear, for him.

Katz straightened the sleeves of his suit and licked his paw, smoothing back his fur. “I shall have to contact my solicitor again. He shall not be pleased to have to find a business in Nowhere again, but I shall not make that ghastly commute to Somewhere from here. And I do intend to run a business before my brain atrophies entirely.”

“Yeah!” Courage said encouragingly. He gave Katz a bright grin and then, at the twitch of Katz’s eyebrow, bounced off of the bed. “Um. Should we tell the others that you’re staying?”

“Ah, yes,” Katz murmured. “Seeing as we are, as you say, your family, I suppose they ought to know that the status quo will be maintained. If anyone’s sat in my chair, I’ll have their guts for garters.”

Courage smiled and yelped “yes!” This was the best news he’d heard in a while and he was glad he’d guarded the armchair as jealously as he had.

“Do be a good lad and go let them know we’ve reached an agreement,” Katz instructed.

Courage hurried over to the door and knocked on it. “It’s okay!” he said. “You can open the door.”

“He ain’t gonna slaughter anybody?”

“No.”

“And he ain’t gonna bail?”

“No,” Katz said. “I shall be a figure in this household for some while to come.”

The deadbolt slid back and the door creaked open. The other villains stood around somewhat awkwardly, poorly concealing their concern.

“You have nothing to fear,” Katz said. “We are quite calm. The issue has been entirely resolved.” The others sighed with evident relief as Katz strode out of the bedroom, dusting invisible lint off of his suit jacket.

“Ah,” he said, pausing and looking up as he entered the hallway. “But I am forgetting. There is just one small matter left to wrap up.”

“Yeah? What’s that, bub?” Big Toe asked.

“I’m taking his fucking eye,” Katz hissed, pouncing on the unsuspecting Cajun Fox. The fox went down with a shriek and a thump.

***

Katz did not get the Cajun Fox’s eye. They managed to pry them apart before they could do each other any permanent damage. Katz growled threateningly as the Queen of the Black Puddle hauled him away, but the Cajun Fox just laughed shrilly and yelled, “Good to have you back, Red!” after him.

That night, Courage resumed his role as body pillow/heating unit. He definitely felt Katz purring as he slept, and he was fairly sure he caught sight of an expression that looked for all the world like a smile on the cat’s face.

Everything was as it should be.

***

He wasn’t an insomniac by any stretch of the imagination, but he was often much too tired to sleep.

Such was the case tonight.

The dog was out like a light and Katz was wide awake. And thinking.

Was this going to be a problem? After all, they’d made peace, but nothing was truly resolved. The dog still deserved to die and Katz still deserved to be the one to kill him. There could be no question about those points.

Perhaps the question just needed to be reframed: was it in Katz’s best interest to kill him, or to show mercy, such as it was. It wasn’t as if death would not be a reprieve for the boy. It might seem like a bit of a cop-out, but there was something to be said for keeping the boy alive so that he could live through more nightmares.

The boy was fond of him. It would be far more brutal to exploit that for all it was worth than to bring his life to a premature end.

And besides, the boy really wasn’t worth wasting two bullets on, was he? Indeed, no. That was far more credit than he deserved. If one bullet couldn’t get it done, that wasn’t Katz’s fault. It was the fault of the weapon.

That firearms dealer was going to have a most uncomfortable conversation with him in the very near future.

In any event, he would not waste more effort on trying to kill the dog. The incident before was a mere aberration--the hesitation, the doubts, the wobbling gun, the way Katz jerked his aim away from the dog’s body. It wasn’t any as drastic as all _that_. He’d been overwrought, obviously, but only because he was subconsciously aware that he was about to cheat himself out of a far more satisfying conclusion to his enemy’s life and had to stop himself before he could do it. Sentiment didn’t enter into it.

No, this was far better, and far more in keeping. Katz could wait, and watch, and let sweet anticipation tighten the tension day by day. It would be so very sweet when it was finally time, in the natural course of things. And of course, he would have to keep an eye on the boy, to make sure that nothing untoward happened to him and shortened the duration of his sentence.

Katz nuzzled down into the pillows and, by an unintended consequence, nuzzled against Courage’s fur.

Life was good. He did so love to play the long game.

***

“AH! THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL PUSS,” the Computer said, the next time Katz went to check his email.

“Indeed. I had no notion I was so missed. How touching.”

“OH YES. SPEAKING OF TOUCHING, LET’S TALK ABOUT MY NEW BODY.”

Courage had some trouble explaining that one.


	6. Make the Misere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cajun Fox knows his dirty little secret.
> 
> One of them, anyway.

He knew where he was before he even opened his eyes.

And that was a very good thing, because it didn’t seem he would be able to open them any time soon.

The signals from his nose relayed desperate reports to his brain and jumpstarted the release of cortisol. As he clawed his way towards consciousness, pain reached down and seized him by the neck, dragging him upward.

He slid into consciousness and found his attention wholly taken up by a head full of dull agony. His muzzy, indistinct thoughts were too nebulous to grasp and waves of pain lapped at and receded from his brainstem with the pulse of his blood.

He was not afraid and not particularly angry. That wasn’t helpful. He could’ve used a hard edge of urgency to help cut through this fog. As it was, he just pushed through, trying to pull his brains together and take stock.

His eyelids were terribly heavy and his head lolled, throbbing, on his weak neck. He longed to crack the joint, but he couldn’t manage the strength to lift his arms.

He was sitting on a hard chair in the attic of the farmhouse. The scent that had awoken him was thick in the air, the Cajun Fox’s smell in every pore and crevice of the room. But of course this was his bedroom. That it should smell of him was not entirely unexpected.

He attempted to stretch and found himself lashed to his seat. Chains, not ropes. No give at all. Interesting, and unpleasantly clever.

Someone else was breathing in the room.

He managed to pry his eyes open and found he really needn’t have bothered. The room was pitch black, not even a rectangle of night sky to hint at the location of the window. He stared into the darkness, disoriented, eyes roving for any clue about his surroundings. His nocturnal vision was excellent, but he was helpless in this kind of absolute darkness.

No. Not helpless. He forced himself to sit up straight and even though it made pain throb in the back of his skull, it restored some of his sang-froid.

Katz scowled, for all the good the expression would do. “I cannot begin to imagine what you think you’re doing.”

“Aww, Red, you’ll break my heart,” the Cajun Fox murmured. Katz could only imagine the shit-eating grin on his stupid vulpine face. The Cajun Fox’s voice floated from somewhere just over Katz’s left shoulder. Katz restrained the urge to shift and roll up that shoulder and hide the vulnerable neck it currently failed to protect. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, but you can’t even figure this out?”

“I’m merely astonished that you have the audacity to attempt such an attack.” Katz rummaged through his brains for information. The last thing he remembered was reading the paper in the living room. That had been in the middle of the afternoon, and he must have dozed off.

More likely, something must have been slipped into his tea. It would explain the pain grinding behind his eyeballs and the mystery of his relocation. If he’d just fallen asleep he would have awoken before anyone so much as brushed against his fur, much less moved him up here and restrained him.

“Well, we got some unfinished business, you and me,” the Cajun Fox said, chuckling softly. Katz glared at the darkness. “See, I know your dirty little secret, Chili Pepper.”

“What on Earth are you nattering on about?” Katz asked, his composure immaculate. “I have no dirty little secrets.”

The Cajun Fox shifted and Katz’s posture tightened. He was close now, closer than before. Not close enough that Katz could feel his breath, but enough that the warmth of a living body radiated towards Katz’s neck and shoulder, making the veins there twitch involuntarily.

“I know what you get up to at night,” the Cajun Fox whispered.

His spiders.

Protective fear zinged up his spine before reason reasserted itself. Katz felt himself smiling. Oh, was that his dirty little secret? Please. Laetitia had laid her eggs ages ago and the babies were perfectly strong hunters, now.

If the Fox so much as stepped into the basement, they’d have him trussed and rotting in seconds. His spiders had nothing to fear.

“So?” Katz murmured. “I scarcely imagine that it’s any business of yours.”

“You think so, do ya?” the Cajun Fox simpered. “I kinda think this is right in my backyard, if you follow me. It ain’t so much the sneakin’ around as it is the lies, Red Vine. I’m hurt, really.”

“Are you really.” He sneered in the dark. He didn’t have the patience for the filthy hayseed’s sense of melodrama. “I’m sure I am so sorry to have disappointed you.”

“Yeah?” the Cajun Fox snorted. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Because we’re going to make up for it, right here and right now.”

Katz’s ears swiveled and tried to follow the whisper of padded feet moving across the floor. The Cajun Fox was on the prowl, circling around from Katz’s left shoulder to his front, close, very close--

Katz turned his head to follow the noise and the shifting scent and bumped his snout against the Cajun Fox’s, his nose momentarily buried in orange fur. Revolted, he jerked away, sneering at the raucous little cackle that emerged.

“I have nothing to discuss with you,” Katz hissed, flexing against the chains. “We have no outstanding business with one another.”

“Oh, Red, don’t you play coy. We don’t see eye to eye too often, but still we’ve gotten to know each other pretty good,” the Cajun Fox said. “I know when you’re trying to bullshit me. And I know when you’re scared.”

Scared? Katz couldn’t help but snap out a tight laugh. “Your self-esteem is so astonishingly healthy,” he sneered. “I cannot begin to imagine the circumstances under which I would find you frightening.”

“Now, this is cute,” the Cajun Fox breathed. He was close again, too close, hovering over Katz’s right shoulder, puffs of warm breath beating against his collarbone. Katz tried not to twitch. If he turned fast enough, maybe he could tear the Fox’s throat out with his teeth… “But since you wanna play little games with me, I’ve gotta resort to some desperate measures to get you to own what we both know is the truth.”

“And that means tying me to a chair?” Katz drawled. “How positively medieval. I’m sure I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Now, now, darlin’, don’t go gettin’ all sarcastic on me, just when we’re about to get good and honest with each other.” The Cajun Fox moved off again and Katz snorted quietly. Utterly vile. The mangy mongrel was so disgustingly familiar with him--always had been. It was positively degrading to be called ‘darling’ by this slack-jawed yokel.

When he got out of this chair, he was going to torture the Fox so very, very slowly. Katz indulged himself with a few seconds of delightful fantasizing before he spoke.

“And how, precisely, do you expect to get me to confess this truth?” Katz asked. “So far you’ve accomplished nothing more than irritating me slightly.”

“Oh, I didn’t even mean to get you all het up,” the Cajun Fox replied. “That’s just gravy.”

Katz rolled his eyes. He listened hard, trying to follow the path the Fox’s feet took back across the room. Something metal thumped on the floor and Katz lurched a little as he felt a pair of pawa plant themselves on his legs. The air in front of him grew warm and he realized the Cajun Fox was leaning in towards him.

“Unhand me, you flea-ridden bumpkin,” Katz hissed, rearing back and away from the Fox’s invasion of his space.

“I just want us to be upfront with each other,” the Cajun Fox continued. His breath rolled warm and damp against Katz’s cheek and Katz could hear his smile. “I ain’t even trying to make you mad, Velvet Cake. I just want you to own up to the truth.”

“I have no idea what you think you’re--”

“I know you want what I got, Red,” the Cajun Fox purred. “I know you don’t like it, but oh, you want it real, real bad.”

Katz sat very still in the dark. He stared, knowing he probably wasn’t even looking at the Cajun Fox, eyes roving back and forth, desperate for a point of contact with reality. With an act of will, he kept himself from hyperventilating.

“What,” Katz said, “are you talking about?” He turned his head a bit, trying to find the Cajun Fox, and felt a whisker or two brush against his own. He twitched away.

“That’s right, Red, you’re just starvin’, ain’t’cha?” the Cajun Fox murmured. “Didja really think I couldn’t see ya, sitting there and lustin’ after it? It’s there, as plain as day, every time I look at ya. Ya might as well have a neon sign hanging over your head.”

Katz’s jaw clenched. His paws curled into fists and he jerked his leg, trying to dislodge the paw. The Cajun Fox squeezed his thighs and Katz very nearly died. He swallowed, his mouth dry. “I do not think you--”

“I know what you get up to at night, darlin’,” the Cajun Fox breathed. “And I’ll tell ya something: I don’t like bein’ left out.”

This was insane. They simply couldn’t be thinking the same thing. Katz’s blood hammered in his veins, adrenaline burning in his wrists and throat. “You--you ignorant, presumptuous, half-witted--”

“So since I’m awful nice, I’m inclined to give ya just what you want. We’re gonna see that you get exactly what your little heart desires,” the Cajun Fox promised. “Just the two of us.”

Oh, dear God.

The paws on his legs squeezed once more and disappeared. Katz’s entire body tensed, tight and nearly quivering, anticipating the next blow. He tried to remain calm, knowing that in the dark and at this distance any change in his breathing would give his torturer an unimaginable psychological advantage.

His breath stuttered and Katz shut his eyes against the dark, mortified.

It was meaningless! It was a base, purely physical reaction! He hated the Cajun Fox, hated him utterly, found him low and loathsome and disgusting. His mind was fixed on that point, absolutely unmovable.

It was just that his body, well, it was a sack of flesh and hormones, you couldn’t really expect it to discriminate! Yes, the predilection was hideous, but it was nothing more than a minor factor! He had it under control! Katz had never, ever acted upon it! Not externally, at least, God knew he’d admitted nothing, whispered nothing.

There was simply no way for the Cajun Fox to know about this, unless, as he claimed, it was obvious.

Katz’s stomach dropped and for an instant he thought he’d be violently sick. The very thought that the entire household had seen his ridiculous, shameful lust written all over him made him wish for death.

With his senses desperately straining for any change in the environment, he smelled the new scent almost immediately, even though the shock of it nearly made him fall out of his seat, chains be damned.

“You’re not serious!” Katz choked. A tangled mixture relief and still-sharper dread flooded his blood. Of course, of course the Fox couldn’t know, of course. Yes. Yes, he’d been panicking for nothing.

But this...this wasn’t much better, at all. It was well and truly one of his dirty little secrets, and still a very painful one. His dignity would not emerge from this unscathed.

“Dead serious, Chili Pepper!” the Cajun Fox chirped.

The aroma of the Cajun Fox’s Goulash au l’Homme de Recensement wafted by Katz’s noise and despite himself he breathed it in. Oh, it smelled fresh, the cayenne spices making the very air sparkle.

He remembered the last time he’d indulged himself and taken a spoonful of it in secret. The census man’s flesh had melted on his tongue, the horses’ eyes bursting under his teeth with a luscious pop that made his knees go weak. The crawfish had been so tender and fresh. The snails’ lips had slithered down his throat with an incredible sweetness. The spices had threatened to make his eyes run, scorching his mouth with brutal pleasure.

He’d chewed so slowly, taking his time and holding himself upright against the refrigerator with one hand, hating, _hating_ the sublimity of the stew and the genius in the hands that had made it.

The scent coiled around his throat, rushing up to electrify his brain. His mouth was watering. Oh, yes, he wanted it, but would it never pass his lips, not like this.

Katz clenched his jaw.

“Made you a nice fresh bucket, all your own,” the Cajun Fox drawled. “Now that I know your nasty little sneak-thievery, I figure it’s the only way to get you to keep from stealin’ everything I make.”

Katz sneered.

“I knew you couldn’t resist my cooking. Nobody can resist my cooking! And you even seem to like it more than most, they way you were carryin’ on in front of the fridge.”

Katz swallowed down his mortification and tried to ignore the Cajun Fox’s giggling.

“All ya ever had to do was ask, darlin’, I would’ve been happy to oblige,” the Cajun Fox teased. “Now, open up.”

Katz tilted his chin up, mouth firmly closed.

“Aw, come on, Red,” the Cajun Fox sighed. “Don’t make me have to break your jaw. I’m trying to give you what you want, here, and get my dues as a chef.”

Katz clenched his hands into fists and ground his teeth together. Never going to happen.

The Cajun Fox sighed and pinched Katz’s nostrils closed. Katz parted his lips and kept them held close to his gritted teeth, sucking air in through the gaps and trying to keep his tongue flat in his mouth.

“You’re just gonna hurt yourself,” the Cajun Fox said, annoyed. “I’ll have to knock you out all over again, and won’t that be sad?”

“Go to hell,” Katz pushed through his teeth.

The Cajun Fox sighed. “This is more trouble than it’s worth, Red. Here I’m tryin’ to be nice, and you’re actin’ like I’m killin’ ya.”

Katz breathed and hated and said nothing. The Cajun Fox tucked his hand under Katz’s chin and pressed hard at the base of Katz’s jaws, pushing painfully. Katz swallowed and tightened his clench.

The Cajun Fox pressed even harder. “If I’m perfectly honest, Velvet Cake, I have to say that you wouldn’t be my first pick to have tied up and at my mercy in my bedroom. I’d enjoy this a lot more if you were your sister.”

His eyes flew open. “I’ll gut you, you little--ack--urk--uck!”

It was an elementary mistake, but his blood had boiled over and he’d begun to hiss through his teeth when the Cajun Fox squeezed. His mouth was open just enough that the Cajun Fox’s fingers were inside before he could tighten his jaw again.

Katz bit down, hard, but the Cajun Fox had his head open between both hands and all he could do was thrash violently, trying to tear away.

“There ya go, darlin’, hang on just a second--”

Katz bit with all his might, trying not to break his jaw in the offing. The Cajun Fox pushed something into his mouth and his hands retreated.

Instead of tasting the goulash, Katz was surprised to taste metal. It wedged between his teeth and held his jaws apart. He tried to spit it out, but a pair of straps fastened it around his head. He stuck his tongue out, realizing it was no mere gag but in fact a ring, holding his mouth open and accessible.

Oh.

No.

Katz thrashed harder and hissed as well as he could under the circumstances.

“I wish you could chew, Red Vine, I really do, ‘cause I think this time the meat came out just right,” the Cajun Fox said. “But at least you’ll be able to taste, huh? Here’s a bite.”

Katz tossed his head from side to side. The Cajun Fox grappled with him, at last putting him in a headlock and holding him still. Helpless in his opponent’s arms, Katz could only breathe hard and await the approaching invader, his blood boiling in his veins.

The Cajun Fox pushed a spoon through the ring in his teeth and deposited its load on Katz’s tongue, before holding his hand over the opening. “Don’t you spit.”

The Cajun Fox needn’t have worried. It only took one bite and he was irretrievably lost.

Oh, it was so good. It was so unfairly, impossibly good! This disgusting, ignorant, mangy scavenger shouldn’t be capable of creating anything so exquisite. The piquant flavors of the gravy slid decadently across his tongue, a sinful and utterly sensual caress of his senses. The taste alone! Good God, what he wouldn’t give to truly enjoy the texture.

He wished he could chew. He couldn’t swallow an entire horse’s eye like this, and those were his very favorite parts, always.

He gasped for air, holding the food in his mouth. With a little twitch of his tongue, he pushed a bite of human flesh up and to the side, piercing it on his fangs. He felt his eyes roll back in his head. Oh, yes…

He loved food. He always had. Ever since he was a kitten, living off of whatever scraps his mother could rake into a pot, he’d loved food. Rarely, very, very rarely, they would be able to buy something better the sawdust that made up their daily meals, and he’d never forgotten the divine pleasure of a rich dessert or a decent cut of meat.

And then for years after he’d left home, food had been the paramount physical pleasure in his life, for a whole host of reasons. Left entirely alone, what else was there for him to do but find an utterly private, utterly discreet outlet for his urges?

It was mortifying. He knew he wasn’t any damn good in a kitchen. Second place was no place, in his estimation. And no matter how hard he tried, he simply didn’t have the palate or the creative spark to generate recipes. All his attempts only ever resulted in that constant, shameful refrain of his existence: a heart full of seething, ardent obsession, and no technique to show for it.

But the Cajun Fox...oh, he could cook, and it was incredible.

He surrendered. Still burning with the hideousness and humiliation of the situation, he closed his eyes and indulged, letting the hot, heavy broth slide across his tongue and down his throat.

He struggled to swallow and shuddered, panting, eyes closed in the dark. The Fox’s scent came in with every breath and his throat clicked as he tried to swallow again. No, he wasn’t sure at all if this was better or worse than what he’d initially feared.

The Cajun Fox laughed softly in his ear, arms locked around Katz’s throat, holding him tight. Katz’s eyes flicked open, furious and ashamed. “There ya go, Red. Here, darlin’, have another…”

Oh, he wanted it, but he thrashed hard, trying to slam his skull back against the Cajun Fox clavicle. He growled as well as he could without the use of his teeth and struggled to lurch his body away from the Fox’s grip.

“Whoo, dear!”

Katz didn’t get far, of course. The Cajun Fox dodged the headbutt and held fast, choking him a little. Katz didn’t care, but the Fox started hissing in his ear and the horrible intimacy of his breath beating against Katz’s flesh made him shake.

“God damn, Velvet Cake, you always gotta make things complicated, don’t’cha?” the Cajun Fox growled, squeezing him. “These’re your just desserts, cher, I warned ya!”

Katz snarled and thrashed within the Fox’s grasp, trying to pull the mongrel off balance.

“You know I can’t abide not bein’ appreciated for my art!” The Cajun Fox held tight, one arm around his neck, the other hand holding the chains. “Should’ve bolted ya to the floor…”

Katz thrashed backwards again. His head hurt too much and his body was too exhausted for this.

“All right, that’s it!” The Cajun Fox released him and shoved the chair over. Katz hit the floor with a grunt and a glower, finding himself flipped on his back, still sitting in the chair.

A heavy weight landed on his midsection and he tried to recoil in horror. Oh, this was so much worse than sitting upright had been, and he should have seen it coming--

“Now, you stay right there, Red,” the Cajun Fox murmured. The Fox sat upright on his stomach, knees straddling Katz’s torso. “Don’t you give me no more trouble and this won’t be such a hassle.”

Katz stilled, panting, trying to think of evasive maneuvers. He couldn’t have another bite of that concoction or he would surely embarrass himself beyond all hope. How many times, in the silence and privacy of the nighttime kitchen, had he nearly moaned aloud? And that from one bite, a mere tease for the appetite! What would he do if he was finally satiated?

The Cajun Fox grabbed Katz’s head by the fur between his ears and held it tight. Katz tried to move, to ignore the pain of pulling the hair, but he couldn’t manage to shift between the grip and the unyielding floor.

The Cajun Fox clicked his tongue. “I swear, you’re makin’ this so much harder than it has to be. What was I supposed to do, when I found out you were sneakin’ around, hiding it like a dirty little secret? You can’t just steal from me and not even let me see how much you love it…”

Katz swallowed and he tried to think. Focus. He must to control his reaction, must endure this stoically and without any demonstration of feeling.

Oh, God, please, please let him keep his composure. The scent alone…

The door swung open and Katz’s eyes slammed shut, burning from the sudden burst of bright yellow light. He made a desperate noise of pain at the searing sensation and the way it made his aching head pound in fresh agony.

“Uh,” said the Queen of the Black Puddle in her soft, slithery voice. Katz could only conclude at she was standing in the doorway. “Should we come back later?”

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING,” the Computer drawled, sounding faintly amused.

The boy yelped in surprise and Katz could hear him dithering in the hall, hopping from foot to foot. Oh, brilliant.

“We’re having dinner, ain’t it obvious?” the Cajun Fox said. He even had the brass to sound annoyed. Katz cautiously squinted an eye open, trying to see around him.

Yes, the Cajun Fox was sitting on top of him, spoon poised in the air and about to pass through the ring between Katz’s teeth. The bucket of stew stood just a few paces away. The Queen of the Black Puddle stood in the doorway with the boy and the Computer at her side. The machine was sitting on its wheeled cart and the Queen’s hair was in rollers. She looked like she would begin to laugh at any moment.

Katz tried to buck and strain against his bindings. Surely the boy would not abandon him to this fate, if he showed how unwilling he was.

Courage moaned and took a few steps into the room. The Queen of the Black Puddle grabbed his collar with a smile.

“Now, now, dogfish,” the watery bint cooed, “I think this is something they need to work out between themselves.”

Katz’s eyes widened in outrage. Above him, the Cajun Fox cackled.

“Much obliged, Queenie,” he laughed. “Just close up the door and we’ll take it from here!”

“But--but--but--”

“BACK TO BED,” the Computer said. “ALTHOUGH PERHAPS I SHOULD STAY AND RECORD THIS. THE INTERNET MIGHT ENJOY IT.”

“But! But!”

Katz grunted and growled, trying to express just how horribly they were all going to suffer for this betrayal.

“What ees all ze ruckus?” Le Quack’s voice demanded, a floor below them. Katz stilled, mortified, before he started to thrash as hard as he could. It would be worth it if Le Quack’s attention would mean escape.

The Cajun Fox pinned him to the ground and held him there.

“Oh, nothing!” the Queen of the Black Puddle sang.

“Zen go ze fuck to bed!”

Courage whined in the doorway and Katz stared at him, willing the mutt to do something. The Queen of the Black Puddle dragged the boy out of the room by his collar, blew them a kiss, and shut the door.

Darkness fell once more.

They listened as the others wandered down the steps and Katz went limp, hope extinguished. His nerves were shot--there could be no hope of maintaining his distance now.

But the dark was a mercy. At least the Fox wouldn’t see him.

The Cajun Fox chuckled. “All right, then. Where were we?”

In the dark, the spoon clinked against the bucket. “There, now...here you go, darlin’...”

The spoon passed the ring and poured its load into his mouth. Composure shattered, Katz moaned aloud, sensual ecstasy sliding across his tongue. He yielded himself to it entirely, eyes closed, wishing only that he had the ability to feel his teeth tearing into the meat.

He felt the Cajun Fox go rigid on his perch. “Uh. You okay, Red?”

Katz ignored him, burning with hateful pleasure as the flavors mingled on his palate, his claws pressing into the pads of his paws. He swallowed, panting, and flicked his tongue out to touch his lips, ready for more.

The next bite was a little slower in coming and he tilted his head up to receive it, pulling the spoon in with his tongue and licking bottom of the bowl. He hastily swallowed the broth, spoon clinking against his teeth, and twitched the utensil around with his tongue, licking into the bowl with deep purr.

“...Red?” Oh, was the Cajun Fox onto him? Who cared? Who cared.

Another unguarded noise of enjoyment, as he let himself experience physical pleasure for the first time in so long. He relinquished the spoon reluctantly and let his head drop back to the floor, breathing hard.

“...Red…?”

In a distant sort of way he imagined what a scene this must be: helpless beneath an incubus, out of his mind and quivering with desire, lying supine amongst the shards of his fractured dignity, exposed to the point of obscenity. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but appetite, and he was so very hungry. Let the Fox have his due, let him have anything, as long as there was more...

Katz did not notice the sound of hurrying feet, but the fog in his mind was pierced by the loud _clang_ of a metal object hitting bone. The Cajun Fox’s body jerked violently, immediately flopping over and off of Katz.

The feet retreated and the lights flickered on overhead. Katz squinted in the light and spied Courage by the lightswitch, looking at Katz worriedly and holding the bucket of stew.

It was just as well he had the ring between his teeth or he surely would have smiled.

“‘ood ‘oy,” he managed, gesturing with his chin for the dog to approach. Courage smiled and trotted over.

***

Katz sat quietly in his chair, a cup of tea sitting on his knee, steaming.

He’d had the foresight to wait until the boy returned to the farmhouse with Big Toe and Le Quack before getting his revenge. They wouldn’t think to check the basement of the Katz Kafé for hours and hours.

He looked up at the Cajun Fox, trussed up in his pets’ webs, his own ring gag holding his mouth open. Laetitia, Augustus, Faustina, Beatrice and Lucretia stood around him, drooling and chittering, waiting for Katz’s permission to bite him.

The Cajun Fox snarled at him, glaring wide-eyed over the rims of his sunglasses, and Katz blinked up at him, favoring him with a very thin smile. He didn’t need it to be dark. He actually rather liked the fact that the Fox could see everything that was going to happen.

“Now, now,” Katz murmured, setting his tea down on the floor and strolling over to stand nice and close to his captive. He reached up and lightly tapped the metal ring with a claw. “Turnabout is fair play, you know.”

The Cajun Fox stared at him and shuddered as Katz turned his attention to one of his spiders, gently dragging his fingertips across Lucretia’s back.

She was very, very ready to lay her eggs.

The Cajun Fox’s mouth would make such a perfect nest.


End file.
